


Glimmer of Blue

by Annevar44



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory, F/M, Fix-It, M/M, Redemption, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2017-12-09 13:40:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 25,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/774845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annevar44/pseuds/Annevar44
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rescued from the Seine, Javert knows his duty toward Valjean.  But he doesn't know what it will lead him to:  one last shot at redemption.  </p><p>  <i>He could see her wherever he looked: leaning against the wall and laughing at him, or dashing breathlessly up the stairs with a smudged face and an armful of fresh-picked flowers.</i></p><p> </p><p>From the kinkmeme prompt:  round 4 page 42</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a man knows his duty

“Javert. Javert, can you get up?” 

Javert is lying on his side in the mud. Mud is in his mouth and between his fingers, and in the darkness he can't see anything but a few wavering streetlamps in the distance. What the devil could he be doing here? His stunned mind clutches at clues. He is drenched and shivering and every breath hurts like a bayonet-thrust between his ribs. This is proof that he is neither dead nor dreaming. Also, he is lying in filth. His limbs are leaden. His head is bare. He remembers gradually that he is Javert. He is Inspector Javert, of the Paris Prefecture. 

No. That is wrong, that last part. 

Only one conclusion is possible: he must have jumped. The last thing he remembers is the view from the bridge down into the tumbling black water. So that's it, then. He jumped but God intervened because suicide is still a mortal sin even when a man's reasons are irreproachable. He has been condemned to remain in the world and serve out his sentence: waking each day with the heart in his chest still beating, the body breathing in and breathing out to sustain a life that has no use or purpose.

He can now discern the shape of another man, a meter from him, also sprawled in the mud at the water's edge. "My leg," the man grunts. “It caught on the wall as I leaped over.” The man tips his head back and squints upward. In a low voice he adds, “And it's a fair hike up the embankment to the road.”

It would be a relief to lie here quietly in the dark until release finds him. If he waits long enough his body will sink away. He suspects it will happen quickly. His strength and certainty are gone, so there is nothing left to bind his flesh together. This stretch of riverbank is a fitting resting place - after all, he was born in mud, wasn't he, some fifty years before. He worked all his life to pull himself clear of it: hand over hand, centimeter by centimeter, always careful to avoid missteps and follow the unwavering light of the law. Raising himself from his origins was the work of decades. Falling, though: that took an instant. 

The other man - _Valjean; of course it is Valjean_ \- tries to straighten his leg. But he throws back his head in sudden pain, and a soft curse escapes him. 

_Valjean, the criminal. Valjean, who twice tonight has saved my life._

Javert summons his will, what remains of it. There is still such a thing as duty, even for a useless man who has wrecked everything else. He pries himself to his knees and then to his feet. The mud sucks at him as if it does not want to give him up. His numb shock is starting to wane, and he is beginning to feel the lacerations that were burned into his soft parts by the martingale. He flinches as he remembers the schoolboys overcoming him and trussing him up like a dog. But it is the memory of Valjean's kindness - the knowing, pitying look in his dark eyes when he cut the rope at Javert's wrists - that shames him most.

“How did you know what I was planning?” he asks wearily. It takes great effort to peel off his coat but he manages, then twists the hem of his shirt to wring it out. Dark rivulets pour out of the cloth onto the ground, back into the all-swallowing mud and the river that flows past in the dark. All the water of the city returns to the Seine eventually - fresh rain, men's excrement; the river asks no questions. She is as wide and strong as a mother's open arms and rejects nothing. Except him.

“I didn’t,” Valjean answers. “From my window I saw the fiacre drive off, but I did not know what to make of it. I spoke a while with my daughter. But after she went to bed my mind was too full to rest, so I came out to walk the city, thinking I might make myself useful somewhere. I was crossing the Allee when I saw your silhouette upon the bridge. Not until you took off your hat did I realize-- Then I took off running, but you were over the wall before I could reach you.”

“You must be a good swimmer,” Javert says grimly. He narrows his eyes, suddenly remembering a certain convict who fell from the yardarm of a ship at anchor. _Prisoner 4023, presumed dead._ “Are you expecting me to thank you?”

“I am only glad to have been of service.”

Javert wonders irritably just who the devil Valjean thinks he has been of service to. God, perhaps. Valjean succeeded in his mission of unwanted mercy, which is proof that God was indeed on his side. Though not on Javert‘s. 

“That leg of yours,” he says. “Will it bear weight?” 

Valjean lurches to his feet, hissing in pain as he sucks his breath in through his teeth. The leg buckles under him and Javert, bone-weary and not the man he used to be, lunges barely in time. “Steady," he pants, his arms around Valjean's middle. "Lean on me.” 

“But you-- I don't want to injure you. Are you sure you're all right?”

This question is so staggering in its stupidity that Javert would laugh if he could spare the strength. “I'm alive," he answers instead. "Aside from that small misfortune--" and here he heaves Valjean upright with a grunt-- "I am quite well.” The man is heavy as a boulder, and in spite of his recent dip he still stinks of the sewers. It has been a long night for Javert, a very long night, but he knows his duty. “Come on,” he snarls. “Lean on me, I said.”

Valjean obeys, slinging his arm over Javert‘s shoulders. Above them the bridge squats mockingly, a starless wedge hacked from the glittering sky. 

Javert has always known his duty. All his life he's dedicated himself to the straight path, refusing to entertain distractions. His record has been unblemished and his superiors have praised him. Yet his years of fierce and upright service have led him, at last, here: to a black bridge and a filthy river and the smell of shit in his nostrils. Valjean - _it has always been Valjean_ \- has triumphed. The message is clear: Valjean, not he, was on the right path all along.

In the dark Javert can make out the pilings plunging down through silent unknowable water to the cold rock below. Somewhere in his life, it seems, he missed a crucial turning. He braces himself and straightens slowly, bearing up under the carcass of a man he hates. “You can put more of your weight on me if you like."

Javert has always known his duty, and he knows it now. And so he will set his face against the steep bank and like a beast of burden will give this sewer-stinking criminal all that remains of his strength. He will get Valjean home. Even if it means dying on the man's doorstep: he'll see it done.


	2. valjean's daughter

“Cosette, my love. Don't be afraid; it's me. Please open the door.”

Javert hears light steps inside the apartment and then a blonde slip of a girl peeks out. She gives a cry. “Papa!”

“It’s nothing; only a small accident.”

Despite her sudden pallor and the shock in her wide blue eyes, the girl leaps forward. She is stronger than Javert would have guessed, and with her help, he is able to get Valjean across the threshold without much difficulty and into a chair before the fireplace. The girl dashes off and returns with an armful of blankets, piling so many around Valjean that he laughs, finally, and claims she is close to drowning him a second time. She does not join in his laughter. Her head is bent over his and her face is drawn. But Valjean takes her hand. " _Mon ange,"_ he says. "I swear to you: I am all right." For a moment they regard each other, and he smiles, and then the girl nods and some of the fear melts from her features. 

Javert, seeing how they look at each other, knows a stab of pain. He is an outsider here, a superfluous man left standing uncertainly in a home that isn't his. The girl is as fair as he remembers his Emilie.

She looks up at him. “What on earth has happened? He is soaked through -- as are you, monsieur!”

He has been expecting the question and has his answer ready; he is not a man who lies. “It was because of me, mademoiselle; he jumped into--”

“We fell,” Valjean interrupts. “This officer and I. The city is wild tonight and we had an accident at the river, the two of us. But it is over and everyone is all right. There is no need for worry.”

Doubt shows in her eyes. She is no fool, Javert notices with approval - but she does not press. She addresses Javert instead. “You need a blanket too, monsieur, and some tea to warm you. I will build up the fire. You must stay the night with us - I will put linens on the sofa and find you something of Papa's to change into. By morning your uniform will have dried.”

“Please, do not trouble yourself, Mademoiselle. I have only come to see him safely home. I will be going.” He bows. “Unless there is something further that you need?”

Valjean shifts in the chair and, with a moan, falls back. 

The girl looks from one man to the other, her bright youth contrasting with Valjean's lined face. A deep fatigue claims Javert at the sight of her. He feels himself to be a thousand years old and ready to crawl into his grave, but she is the fresh breeze, barely a step out of girlhood with hot blood surging to her cheeks. She hesitates. “I shouldn’t ask, but-- I must get a message to someone. I had meant to see him tomorrow, but now I will not be able to leave my father."

Valjean says sharply, “Cosette! do not impose--”

“It will be no imposition, Mademoiselle,” says Javert. She scrawls out a note and presses it into his hand. Their hands touch; hers is cool. He thinks of rose petals and the polished glow of Emilie's cheek. It has been a long time since he touched either. 

He glances down at her looping, feminine script. _Rue des Filles de Calvaire._ Ah. He might have known. The wounded traitor Valjean was carrying through the sewers is a third member of this charmed circle. He does not allow his lip to curl in disgust. He nods, his face impassive.

Valjean mutters, “I’m sorry about this, Javert, she should not--” But as his gaze falls on the girl, his voice trails away. His look softens and, as Javert watches, he is metamorphosed from a filthy criminal into something else. Javert cannot think of what that something is, but it unsettles him, and he looks toward the door and wishes to be away from this place, and quickly. He knows now who this girl is. Valjean's words of long ago, his plea in the hospital at Montreuil-sur-Mer, come back to him: _"Three days! for the love of God, Javert!"_

So the man has done it: He's raised the whore's brat all these years. She has grown into this golden creature, and she loves him.

“I will make sure your message reaches its destination,” he says, "on my honor. And in the morning I will return." He nods in Valjean's direction. "He must see a doctor about that leg, and you will need my help getting him into a carriage.”

He waves off their thanks. As the door closes behind him, he draws a shaky breath. It is a great relief to be away from those people. However he is bone-cold and weary to his marrow, and he would like to stay here for just a little while outside their door, leaning his forehead against it. He glances around; there is no one to see. A moment only. That is all he needs.

But of course, he cannot rest until his work is done. There is the letter in his hand. He has his duty. 

Valjean seems even heavier the next morning, a groaning burden bearing down on Javert as they manage the narrow staircase one jolting step at a time. Javert's own injuries and fatigue have taken deeper hold of him now and his muscles are knotting up like fists. When they reach the street, he climbs into the carriage and ignores the protests of his back, straining to hoist the injured man up from above. Cosette assists from below, making soft sounds of distress. 

Naturally he must stay at the surgery while Valjean is attended to. By the time they return to the Rue de L'Homme Arme and he lowers Valjean back into his chair by the fire, and props the white-wrapped leg up on a stool, and helps Cosette mummify the man in a dozen freshly-laundered blankets, the day is half gone. No matter. He has nowhere else to be.

During the carriage ride he had seen phalanxes of soldiers out in force, and even at Valjean's window he can hear their tramping boots in the street below. There is work to be done; the entire police force must be on patrol today, including the night watch and those who had been scheduled for off-duty. The barricades will have been torn down by now, the troublemakers gone to ground, and men like him will be on the hunt and bringing them to justice. The thought of this, of stealthy pursuit, of alley-sweeps and the clink of manacles, stirs his spirit for a moment. If only he, too, were out there--

But all that is behind him. 

“We're in your debt, Monsieur L’inspecteur,” Cosette says; "Papa and I." He's annoyed by that false 'papa' and itches to correct her. She is smiling now, less nervous than she has been, and her high spirits have reasserted themselves. There is too much in her that he finds familiar, and this is part of his punishment - one more reminder of things past that he would rather keep from thinking of. Still he can't keep his eyes from her. 

_Emilie is more than fifty now._ It is a strange thought, sudden as a knife-strike, and as painful. She has been gone for thirty years, but in his dreams her face has stayed forever twenty-two. 

“Won’t you dine with us?” asks Cosette, and to Javert's horror, Valjean nods agreement.

“My housekeeper is a fine cook," he says, "and we would welcome the company.” His words are spoken evenly, but Javert does not miss the hidden warning in his look. _Be careful what you say in front of the girl._

It is too much to bear. But bear it he must. 

The food is indeed good -- better than Javert is used to -- and Cosette chatters gaily. Still, for all her warmth and social graces, Javert can feel a chill hanging over the table. Cosette has divined by now that he and her so-called 'papa' have a past acquaintanceship. She is a clever interrogator, maintaining a wide-eyed girlish look even as she brings the conversation, again and again, back to the men's common past. There is a hunger to her questioning. It is clear she knows nothing of her origins or her guardian's sordid history. Valjean has committed a scurrilous deception against her all these years, keeping her in the dark about who he really is and how she fell into his possession. Javert wants no part in it. 

"So, you and Papa have known each other a very long time," she remarks as she refills his glass yet again. All evening she has been overly generous with the wine. He has never been plied with liquor before, and finds it amusing despite himself.

Valjean answers. "Not so very long, my dear."

She turns to her guardian with a smile, all innocence. "Why Papa, it seems unlikely that the Inspector made your acquaintance during the years we lived at the convent -- I hardly think the nuns would have allowed him entrance!"

_Convent?_ He looks swiftly to Valjean, whose hand has tightened around his spoon.

"Well -- you are right about that, of course -- the years slip by faster than I can count them. I suppose the inspector and I made each other's acquaintance a while ago. It was before you and I moved to Paris. And now he has moved here too, and recently luck has brought us together again." He smiles at Javert. There's desperation in the set of his mouth. 

Javert sets his teeth against each other so hard his jaws ache from it. "Luck, indeed," he says.

.

The leg keeps Valjean at home for weeks. The doctor is entreated upon to make house calls, and Cosette attends to her guardian with faithful devotion. She pays frequent visits, too, at the Rue des Filles de Calvaire. The Pontmercy boy is likewise homebound, and apparently it is generally accepted that his recovery will be jeopardized if he cannot feast his eyes on his beloved every single day. So Cosette shuttles between her two wounded adorers. Javert is pressed into service for many important tasks. He hails carriages and hands the girl up into them; he is her escort when she travels after dark; he delivers notes between the lovebirds, he is quite indispensable! and he hides his misery well. He becomes a frequent guest at dinner. And always, when night falls, he goes home alone and tries not to think of the next day and the next, the path before him, the march to the grave. 

Every morning, he averts his eyes from his uniform. He washed it many times in the week after his fall and it looks clean -- but he is sure the stink of the Seine clings to it still. 

.

There is to be a wedding, Valjean tells him one night. They are together in the sitting room. It is late and Cosette has retired to her chamber. Javert is usually gone long before this time, but tonight Valjean has detained him with tea and conversation. There is a quiet misery to Valjean that has been present for some days, and tonight it fills the room like thick air.

“No surprise there," says Javert. 

“What do you think of the boy?”

He is a traitor, of course; that's what Javert thinks. He is something of a fool, too, with his mooning looks and lover's talk. That's his own business, though. Let him learn for himself how fate deals with a young man's hopes.

“He seems to care for her,” he grunts. 

Valjean nods. He does not seem cheered by Javert's opinion. “Help me with these pillows, would you?" he murmurs. "Ah, better. Have I told you how much your help has meant to us both -- Cosette and me?”

“Several dozen times this afternoon alone. If we are to include the morning, the number will be past counting." He does not intend this to be amusing, but Valjean laughs anyway, though only briefly. Then his pensiveness returns. 

“She’s leaving me,” he mutters. “I know it’s right, she’s young, it’s the way of things -- and God knows I would do anything for her happiness. But--”

A wrenching sound breaks from him, and Javert’s heart stops as if plunged into ice-water. Oh no. This is too much. He rises and jams his hands into his coat pockets and remains standing awkwardly, not knowing where to put his eyes. 

At least Valjean has the grace to join him in mortification. “Oh, by Christ. Forgive me, Javert, it‘s just--” And that’s as far as he gets before his face contorts again. He presses a handkerchief against his eyes. “I’m a fool,” he says. “This much, I know.”

Javert swallows. “No.” 

He's never had children, even ersatz ones, but Valjean's pain is like a gypsy chord that throws him back into the past. Thirty years ago he found out what a certain kind of woman could do in a man's life. In those days he lived in a dingy two-and-fifty room above a barbershop, backing onto a piss-smelling alley. Emilie had never set foot in it - but his hope that one day she would, was enough to conjure her sunlight in the dim bare place. He could see her wherever he looked: leaning against the wall and laughing at him, or dashing breathlessly up the stairs with a smudged face and an armful of fresh-picked flowers. With her blue eyes and rush-colored hair she lit the room into flame-touched colors. Even the dull view at his window was transformed by the simple fact of her existence, so that the line of gray tenements across the alley became mountain cliffs, and beyond them he could make out the distant outline of forests, vivid lakes, and waterfalls wild and beautiful. 

But one day all that changed. Sunlight and color fled in an instant. Suddenly he was able to see the truth: that the room was only drab and ugly. Love's alchemy was revealed to be no more than a trick for the gullible, and when he stared morosely across the alley, the view was only what it was.

He turns; Valjean has touched his arm and is asking him to fetch something from his bedroom wardrobe. It is a small black trunk with a brass clasp. It smells of loss. Valjean lifts out its contents one by one and smoothes them reverently. There is a black dress, thick stockings, petticoats, a black jacket and hat -- a full set of mourning clothes for a small girl. Javert can hardly stand to watch the man drag out the ghosts of Cosette’s long-gone childhood; it is like seeing him gouge his own flesh with a knife.

“You should put those away,” he mutters. “It doesn’t do any good to revisit the past.” Valjean nods as if grateful for the instruction but he sits like a man paralyzed. Javert reaches to gather up the clothes. 

The hand that clamps down on his wrist is a surprise. 

“Javert,” Valjean says, his voice throaty. His eyes shine too bright. “Javert, I’m so,” And now he turns on Javert a look so broken that Javert feels himself tumbling into the crevice of the other man's soul, down into darkness and hoplessness and despair. He is bespelled, and can only watch in limp horror as Valjean grips his hand and bends to kiss the back of it, his warm lips flattening the sparse dark hairs over Javert's knuckles. 

There is no way out of this. He steels himself and thinks: it is all right; it's just a kiss; I have had worse. 

Valjean takes Javert's face between his hands.


	3. long ago, under an elm behind the church

_1803_

On a small Parisian street, behind an undistinguished church, there exists a sheltered leafy nook that, as dusk falls, makes a good meeting place for lovers.

The church of St. Claire stands on a corner in an unfashionable arrondisement. Behind it, the church cemetery is small but well-kept, made intimate by the neat hedges that encircle it. A majestic elm presides over the clearing. The elm is older than the graves at its feet -- though most of the sleepers there have been in their beds for more than half a century. It was a sapling when the ground was broken seventy years before. Now its girth is mighty, its base ringed by the knees of its massive roots which, farther out, spread wide and deep in the dark and silent earth. And so the elm's roots hold the dead in their embrace, while its canopy provides shade for the slumberers through all the hot months of summer and fall, and in winter makes a roof to keep out the bitterest winds. There can be no doubt that in the St. Claire cemetery, the dead sleep in comfort. 

The elm has not gone unscathed by time. A black fissured scar descends down its north side from twice the height of a man; it can only signify an old lightning-strike. The tree has survived troubles. 

“That’s why I love it,” murmurs Lili. “If this tree can come through anything, than so can we.” She stands on tiptoe to kiss her young man on the lips.

“How long have you got?” he asks her.

“Father will be home at his usual hour. When the bells ring, I have to fly.” She glances up at the steeple.

“Never enough time,” he mutters. He is thinking how perfect she looks in the dappled shade of the elm, her rush-colored hair caught back with a jeweled pin. The thought is not entirely happy: at its core is the bitter seed of knowledge that he doesn't deserve her.

He pulls out the hairpin and sweeps his hands through that golden splendor. “My God, Lili. I can hardly stand it, being away from you. Every day it only gets harder. How long will it be before--” He sees her face cloud over. He is not a man who misses much, and love has sharpened his attention.

“You haven’t spoken to him yet,” he says. It is almost an accusation; not quite, but almost.

She chews the edge of her nail. “I can’t. I know what he’ll say.”

“How can you be so sure? I’ve a good job; I’m going to rise. My reports are excellent; he will see that if he looks into it. Not much longer and I’ll make second-tier and that'll mean another ten francs a week. He has to know I’m steady. He _has_ to.” He looks at her with desperation. Ever since he met her, the careful plans he had made for his future seem fragile as wisps of thread. All his life, he's girded himself against uncertainties - but she's brought a wild chaos into his world, one he never expected, and now questions and fears flutter under his ribs and he can't stave them off.

“It isn’t the money," she says. "It isn’t your job. It’s--” She looks down. "Can't you understand? It's more than that."

"Tell me, then." He makes himself say it. Really, he isn't sure he wants to hear.

“You know my mother died when I was eight. Childbed fever.”

He nods. “I remember you saying.”

“It’s been just he and I since then. He raised me by himself, him and the hired girls. He loved my mother. He's never gotten over her death. Sometimes when he drinks, he still talks about her. He even cried, once, because it was the anniversary of the day they'd married.”

That doesn't sound like the man he knows, old Ravin buttoned up in his uniform at official functions: chest plastered with ribbons, face like a battered tin plate, back as broad and stiff as an oar. “What’s that got to do with you and me?”

“Don't you see? I’m all he has left. ’The one joy in my life,’ he calls me. That’s why he won’t let me go.” She toes at the dirt, kicks one of the knobby roots.

“Come on, Lil." There is a hard knot where his stomach should be. For four months they've been meeting like this, and still she won't speak to her father. If she cared for him enough, then surely-- "You just have to work on him," he says. "Please. Ask him. You don’t know; he might surprise you.” He smiles suddenly, his fears withdrawing for an instant. “For all you know, he’ll be glad to get rid of you and have some peace in his old age; make you another man’s burden.”

She presses him up against the tree trunk. He doesn’t tell her what it does to him, her delicate hands warm over his heart. He hasn't known much happiness of any kind, and none like this even in his dreams. He tries not to think about the joy she's invoked within him. He's afraid that dwelling on it would tempt fate. 

The top of her head barely reaches his chin. He buries his nose in her hair. “You smell like flowers. How do you do that?” 

“Girls have our tricks! Also, I spent all morning fixing up the old madame's garden - that horrible woman who lives next door to Papa. She's hopeless with plants; she only loves her yappy little dog. But tell me truly now. What kind of flowers do I smell like? Roses? Tell me it's roses.”

Roses, he agrees.

“And what color?”

He is perplexed by the question. “Do the different colors have different scents?” He has never heard that before. He can't see how it would be possible.

She groans. “Oh -- men! Yes, of course. For example, white ones smell of purity and innocence.” She bats her eyes.

“Ah. Perhaps not that kind, then.” His face is always serious even when he teases her. He isn't known for having a sense of humor, but she is one of the few -- perhaps the only one -- who sees it. She kicks him in the shin. “All right; have mercy!” he says. “That kind that grow in front of the Musee Nationale all in a mass - pinkish? I saw them blooming this week as I rode by. That’s the color you smell like.”

“The Peking roses!" she exclaims, delight leaping to her eyes. "They were transplanted from the Versailles gardens two years ago. Are they not magnificent? But they are not 'pinkish,' you fool; they are blush-peach.”

The steeple bells begin to ring. 

Desperation clutches at him again. “Lili,” he says. “Please.”

“I‘ll talk to him soon,” she promises -- but her eyes slide off sideways. He isn't sure, looking at her. “I have to wait for the right time to do it. You understand, don't you? Say you do." He nods. "When can you get away again? Shall we meet next week at this time?”

He has his duty schedule memorized. Next week it will be difficult to get away, but he will be here. Here in their secret place they can't be found out: only the dead are witnesses, and they approve of lovers.

With a last kiss, she flies from him. 

Alone in the gloom, he runs his hand over the elm's black scar. The tree has survived troubles. So has he, for that matter. That's the important thing: surviving.


	4. the stupid dreams of youth

The kiss lasts only a moment before Valjean breaks away. Shame and chagrin are written in his face.

“I'm sorry-- I didn't mean-- I shouldn’t have presumed.”

“No-- no.” Javert didn’t mind the kiss so much as he does Valjean’s pained embarrassment. He had flinched at the touch of those strange lips on his and the other man must have felt it. But he owes Valjean his life. To refuse him anything is not permitted. 

And now Valjean won't meet his eyes. "You must be tired; you should go. And I-- I will be all right."

To patch over the awkwardness of the leavetaking, Valjean makes Javert promise to return for dinner the following night, as usual. There is a quick handclasp in the doorway which feels almost furtive, as if both men were criminals now. 

.

The next evening, Valjean tries to make the incident disappear, and Javert with it. His leg is nearly well, he insists; it gives him just a small amount of trouble and only on the stairs. He is healed enough to manage without Javert’s assistance.

“I will never be able to repay you, Javert. But you’ve done too much for us already.” He rises from the sitting-room chair and is almost, but not quite, able to conceal his stagger. “See? My strength is returned. Should I need anything, Cosette will be here.”

He does not add _at least, for two weeks more._

Cosette, listening from the doorway, bites her lip. “Papa,” she says. “I should postpone the wedding until you are fully healed. Marius will understand.” 

“You’ll do no such thing. I won’t keep you from the happiness you deserve.”

“Papa--”

Javert cannot tolerate their fumbling efforts at mutual sacrifice. “I am at leisure, and it is my honor to assist you both as long as you need,” he says, in a tone that brooks no argument.

"All right," Valjean sighs. "I cannot be further in your debt than I already am." 

.

A week later, Cosette approaches him to ask a favor. “Marius would like to return to the café where-- where he used to go sometimes. I promised to accompany him, and he is set on making the trip today. Truly, I do not think he is strong enough. But I gave my word I’d be at his side. I wonder, would you mind very much to come with us? In case....” She did not finish the sentence.

“I had thought M. Pontmercy was much improved.” 

She blushes faintly. “It’s not the wounds to his body I’m worried about,” she says.

.

Pontmercy is polite but impersonal, as always. Neither of them has ever spoken of what happened at the barricades. If the boy is surprised to see Javert still alive, he does not show it. Privately, Javert thinks he makes a poor specimen of revolutionary. No wonder he and his friends got cut down; probably they were writing sonnets and mooning over their lady-loves when they should have been keeping watch and readying their weapons.

The carriage draws up at the Café Musain.

 _Oh, no,_ Javert thinks. His injuries from the martingale are long healed, leaving only dark discolored marks at his wrists and between his thighs where the ropes violated him that night. Now the old wounds start to throb anew. _Not here. Anywhere but here._

He offers to wait outside with the driver, but Cosette gives him a pleading look behind the boy's back. Feeling sick, he follows them inside.

The café has not been open in some time -- presumably not since the uprising. The inner door is splintered and some of the chairs are knocked over, though it looks as if someone has made at least a try at setting things in order. There is a dark stain on the floor in the corner, the size of a man. There are pocks in the walls, and he knows at a glance that many of them were made by the same kind of rifle that he has at home, the one that stands beside his bed. The hand of death is upon the place.

It occurs to him that he hasn’t cleaned his gun since the night he entered the river. 

“All my friends,” the Pontmercy boy is saying, in a voice so choked with despair that Javert cannot help listening although he would really rather not. “All of them…” 

Javert feels a wave of disgust. Stupid boy. Not only a traitor, but an idiot as well. What did he expect? He and the other little idiots stood here with the might of France bearing down on them. They had talked their silly talk over wine and bread, and then they took it too far and lost their lives - predictably enough - and all for what? For a pack of nonsense. Javert is angry not for himself but for Cosette. She is a girl he admires: stout-hearted and practical, and charming in the mysterious effortless way of certain women. She's the kind that will bring both fire and ease to a man's life. She deserves better than marriage to this moonstruck dreamer.

Pontmercy lurches into a chair and puts his head in his hands. Immediately, Cosette kneels beside him The boy is crying shamelessly now, but the girl is all strength and devotion as she pulls him closer. They lean their cheeks against each other and where they touch, his tears wet her face and make it shine. Javert can't stand this. He has to look away.

 

“Why did you save him at the barricades?” he asks Valjean that night. The housekeeper has cleared away the dinner plates; Cosette is in her room. 

“Who -- the boy?”

“The boy.” 

“Cosette loved him,” Valjean murmurs. “I hated him because of it. I saved him so he could take from me the one joy I have ever known.”

If there's reason in that answer, Javert doesn't see it. "I don't understand," he snaps.

"She's happy." 

But in fact, Cosette's eyes have stayed red-rimmed since the trip to the cafe. Which, as far as Javert can see, is a fine argument that she'd be better off alone.

There is a touch at his sleeve, and Valjean is smiling at him. 

“I hate him still, I think. But I could not admit it to anyone but you.” 

They regard each other for a moment. "You are entirely beyond my understanding," Javert says. But Valjean's smile broadens; the damn fool seems to think he's being complimented. Finally, Javert can't help but shake his head and sigh.


	5. scarlet lily

Thursday evening has come again at last. A block ahead of him, he spots Lili skimming light as a bird over the pavement. He could call out to her, but they are not supposed to be seen together. Also, he is too much enjoying the sight of her in motion to want to slow her flight. 

A young man stops beside her and she pauses. He is saying something, a joke perhaps, a compliment; her face is full of laughter. He reaches for her hand in mock seriousness, as if to take it and press it to his lips. Lili snatches it away and is shaking her head at him, laughing still, her hair like streams of falling water lit by the setting sun. She continues her skimming flight toward the St Claire church while the man stands flat-footed staring after her.

At moments like this he sees his peril clearly. He has set his hopes on a precious thing he cannot keep. She is too good for him, and he knows it. 

But the church of St. Claire rises before him now, and in the little cemetery he finds her, as always, waiting under their elm. His heart leaps with joy and relief. They join in an embrace, and it is as natural as if they have always been together and always will be. Something is wrong, though. She clings to him as if she's drowning. 

“I asked him,“ she says. “My father. I asked him what he would think about… about me meeting someone, a young man.”

From her tone, he already knows the old man's answer. He bends his head in defeat. “So. He said no." He can't keep the bitterness from his voice. But those three words spoken in the dusk of a cemetery, in the shadow of a church, have a finality to them that he instantly regrets. “Oh, Lili," he groans. "Did you try? Truly?”

It's a stupid thing to say. “Of course I tried, what do you think? He wouldn‘t budge. Said he couldn‘t do without me, said I had a duty as his only child.”

He thinks desperately, trying to come up with some idea that might make things right. “Maybe later? After he knows me better? After you‘re a little older?”

Lili looks down. She shakes her head fiercely. “No,” she says in a low voice. “It will never happen. You don't know what he's like. He’ll never let me go.” 

“What’ll we do, then? Should I -- should I talk to him myself?” In his heart he hopes she will refuse. He cannot think of any good that would come of it, but he has to make the offer..

She laughs harshly. “Jacques! He would only kill you, and that would hardly improve matters! No. I have a better idea than that. We must leave. We must run away.”

He stares, expecting her to break into a smile and show she means it for a joke. But she doesn’t. 

His heart contracts in fear. 

“But-- Lili! Wouldn't your father kick over every haystack and boarding house in France to get you back? He’s the assistant chief of police for the whole of the Paris department. We’ll be running forever.” 

“Are you scared?” she asks him. She takes his hand, and her fingers are warm and strong. There is something different about her tonight, a determined bearing that makes her seem less of a young girl and more the woman she is growing into. “I've been considering it for months - and now that he's given his answer, I've been thinking of nothing else. Jacques, listen. It will be all right. We can go out on our own and be together. You’ll find work; I know you will. As some kind of prison guard like you were before. Or -- perhaps you could find an engagement with a nobleman, riding beside him to protect him when he travels. You're brave and strong, and I've seen how splendidly you ride. There's lots of work waiting for you, out in the world." 

His mind's a tumult. To go on the run with her, and have her tiger of a father coming after them; to leave every safe thing he knows -- he can’t believe she would want this of him. He's been so careful to build his reputation as a steady worker. His rented room is here, and his job, and his-- well, his _everything;_ that's all. His plans. His future. Everything he's always counted on.

He stammers, "Well, but-- what about you? No proper home, no family; and I'm nothing but an orphan and can't give you anything; you can't think that's any life for a girl--"

"Oh," she says, "don't worry about me! I've told you my plans before: I'm meant to run my own flower shop, the best that France has ever seen. I don't need Paris or my father. I'm not afraid of strange places or hard work. I'm not afraid of anything, except being trapped like this forever, never able to get out from under and make my own way." She stops suddenly, and draws a paper from the waist of her dress. "Look at this! I thought of it this morning.” Proudly she hands the scrap to him. 

It's a drawing done in elegant penwork, showing a scarlet flower entwined around the letter E. He looks at it stupidly. Finally she laughs, “Can't you see, that's a lily! It’ll be the symbol of my shop, the one I mean to open just as soon as-- Oh, Jacques, can’t you imagine how it could be? Just the two of us out in the world. I’d have no one but you -- and you’d have me.”

“I-- Lili, I--” This is madness; the ground is giving way beneath him. “But I, I’m involved in some important work right now; I have responsibilities and a duty to my superiors and to the city. An officer of the law can’t just run away at the drop of a hat.”

Her eyes flame up suddenly. “Oh, yes -- your _duty_ \-- is that what you call it?” 

Stung, he gapes at her. “What do you mean?” 

“It’s always ’duty’ with you. But I could think of another name for it!”

It's hard to breathe; as if he’s taken a blow to the belly. “But I-- I thought you liked it that I am serious about my work at the prefecture. You've always said--” 

“Yes, I do like it,“ she says bitterly. “I admire you. I have from the first. How dedicated you are and how much you believe in justice. It's only that sometimes I think you use words like “work” and “duty” as an excuse for never deciding anything on your own. All you ever want is to play it safe. To follow someone else’s rules and take the crumbs they throw at you. And you'll be grateful if they move you up to second tier, won't you, when you could have--” She gulps, and the last words are nearly a whisper. "When you deserve so much more than just that." 

He wants to protest but his throat is dry and words won't come.

She's furious now, as if she hates him. “Why don’t you just say it? You’re scared of my father! You’ll meet me here once a week, for a stolen kiss -- but I’m not worth more than that to you! You won‘t risk anything greater.”

She storms off, leaving him gasping out her name. This is worse than a blow; it’s a knife wound that's torn him open. She's leaving and he can't breathe as he watches her go. He's seen men die of gut wounds on the street, just like this: writhing and clutching their bellies as innards spool around their fingers.

But, beside the church door, she stops and turns back to him. “Next week,” she says, her voice low and urgent. “ _Please,_ Jacques. Swear you'll come and we'll make our plans. Promise you'll be here. Please don't keep me waiting.” 

So there will be a next time. It's a reprieve, and it's enough to lift the pain so that he can straighten up, shakily, and take almost a full breath. But he has learned something terrible tonight: he knows now just what it will feel like, someday, when she leaves him for good.


	6. two men who have known each other a long time

Wedding preparations consume both homes: the one Cosette will soon preside over as mistress and the one she will soon abandon. Valjean smiles whenever she is watching, but his face settles into lines of grief as soon as her back is turned. His leg continues to heal. However, he has another injury, suddenly, to his right hand. He keeps it wrapped in gauze, the arm in a sling. He is vague about how it happened. Javert frowns and watches and says nothing. 

Valjean, with Javert in attendance, goes to the Gillenormand home one afternoon to discuss some affairs with the grandfather. Marius welcomes them both as he always does: politely and respectfully; nothing more than that. 

When they are alone later, Javert says, “The Pontmercy boy should hate me as a spy and worship you as his savior -- but he shows no feeling towards either of us. Has love made him witless?”

“I think he remembers none of it,” Valjean answers. “And thank God for that.” 

Javert looks at him curiously. “What did you tell them at the barricade, after you let me go? That your shot had found its mark?” 

“I let them think it.” 

“You should have done the thing properly,” Javert mutters. “It was your right, and it would have made more sense and saved us all some trouble.” 

“Ah -- the excellent Inspector Javert always prefers an orderly and efficient end to things!” says Valjean with a touch of amusement. “But have you forgotten? It was you who hailed the fiacre for us that night and got him home to grandfather when I scarcely had strength to rise from my knees. You were the means of his salvation. Had I killed you, he would have bled to death beside the sewer gate.”

Javert shrugs. “That would have been even simpler, would it not? You and Cosette would continue to live here always, the boy and I gone and no more threat to your happiness. Would that not be your fondest wish?”

Valjean looks pained; he changes the subject. “Tell me this, since we are speaking of the past. What were you doing at the barricades? It was foolish of you to think you could pass unrecognized among the rebels.” 

“I was ordered there by my commander.” 

“Commendable. But your face is not unknown among the street people of Paris. I should think it must be quite famous.” 

“It was my duty,” says Javert. “Risk is part of the work and must be confronted as it comes.” 

“It's a curious thing," Valjean muses. "You’ve never shirked an order, have you - no matter the risk or the chance of failure. In the line of duty, you’ve gambled your life a thousand times. In fact, nearly a year ago I saw you do it.” 

"Oh? And when was that?”

“On a certain night in the Gorbeau tenement, in the home of a man who called himself Jondrette. You dared him to fire his pistol at you, point-blank.” 

“The Gorbeau-- “ Javert breaks off, stares at Valjean. Then he curses violently. “The prisoner who went out the window. You." When Valjean inclines his head in a small bow, Javert snorts, "Well, that's too much. It's impossible! But, then, indeed, I always said that one must have been the best of the lot!” Valjean continues to smile knowingly in his maddening fashion. He removes the sling and wrapping from his right hand, and flexes the fingers to work the stiffness out. Javert can't help giving a low chuckle. “How the devil did you get mixed up with those cutthroats, Jean Valjean? Even at your worst, I can’t believe you were ever of their class.”

“It’s a long story. I imagine you led them all away after I left, and they are behind bars still?”

“That is also a long story,” Javert answers. He looks at the other man, shakes his head, and then breaks into hearty laughter. “Valjean,” he says. “We have known each other too long and too well, I think.” Valjean looks surprised but pleased. For a moment they grin at each other like a pair of fools.

It‘s Valjean who sobers first. “And that night, when you burst in on that den of murderers: you were there in obedience to a superior who ordered the raid. Am I right?“ 

“The raid was mine -- in fact it was your young Pontmercy who put me on to it. My obedience was to the law and to my duty as an officer. Of course I requested approval from my superior before I commandeered the use of the _sergeants de ville._ You are getting at something, it is clear. Out with it.”

"I would say you are a brave man... in a certain sense.” 

“You imply there is some other sense, in which I am not? Please," he bows mockingly. "Do tell me.”

“I think," Valjean says, "I think you like the certainty of knowing that, succeed or fail, you are only following orders. It makes everything easy for you, doesn’t it? When you were a prisoner at the barricades, expecting execution, you had that comfort at the last: 'I have obeyed; I have done my duty; the failure is not my own.’ " 

“What exactly are you accusing me of?”

Valjean shrugs. “Say what you will about those young men at the barricade. At least they took their own risks; they were their own men.” 

“They were traitors,” Javert snaps. His voice is too loud. “And idiots. And now they’re dead.”

“Not all of them. One’s about to wed my daughter.”

There's a brief silence, both men considering those words. Javert thrusts himself to his feet and strides out, slamming the door.


	7. chimerae

They come together under the shelter of the elm. Jacques would kiss her forever if he could, but soon enough she breaks away. There is a sound above them; a shadow moves among the branches. Lili grasps his arm. 

“Is someone there?” she says in a low voice. “Are we being watched?” 

“It’s no one," he answers. “A bird, perhaps. Your father… you can't think he had you followed?”

“My God, Jacques,” she groans. “My nerves are stretched taut as wire. Ever since I told him that there might be someone, he wants to know every place I go, everyone I speak to. I have never seen him like this before, and I am becoming afraid.” She looks up at him. “Have you thought more about what I said last time?”

“Running away, you mean."

“It wouldn’t even be that. I’m twenty-two. You’re twenty-four. We aren’t children -- though my father wants to keep me caged like one forever.” 

He looks away and a wash of anger overcomes him. “You’re such a dreamer,” he says. “You’re certain there’ll be some paradise waiting out there for us, some kind of fairyland where chimerae roost in the forest at the edge of a blue lake--” He breaks off.

Lili gives a short, puzzled laugh. “Chimerae by a lake? Whatever do you mean?”

“Nothing, forget it,” says Jacques, kicking a rock. “I just mean, things are as they are and we have to face them instead of imagining them different. It’s like-- it’s like, you calling me Jacques.”

“You asked me to call you Jacques,” she protests.

“It was silly of me. It’s not the name everyone else knows me by, it's just, something I was called long ago.” His tone is frosty. 

“But you said you hated your given name. Anyway, you strike me more as a Jacques. Honest and upright; no pretensions.”

“Well, we should face things as they are, even if we don’t like them.”

“Oh! Very well then, if that’s how you want it. From now on I shall call you nothing but V--” She squeals as he claps his hand down over her mouth; when he removes it she is smiling wickedly and he cannot help kissing her again. 

But in an instant she is serious once more. “All right; you will stay Jacques. But what about me? Do you know I have been called Lili for as long as I can remember? It was my mother’s name for me when I was still in the cradle. 'Sweet Lili, sweetest child,' she used to say.” She takes his hand and holds it between both of hers. “But I’m not a child anymore. I know what I want. So call me by my Christian name tonight -- and tell me that you love me, as I love you." 

“Do you?” he says wonderingly. “Love me?“

She nods somberly, as a breeze stirs the sweeping crown of the elm, making the leaves applaud softly all around them. “I love you.“

He is speechless. Can this be true? Can it be possible that she is someone he can count on? He wraps his arms around her and lets his lips brush her hair. His throat contracts and for a moment he cannot speak. At last he manages it. "Emilie, Emilie," he says, feeling his lips and tongue shape the word. "Emilie, I love you." A sudden heat and joy surges through him, opening all his pores to the dusk and the coming night, the broad wild sweep of possibilities and the rose scent of her hair. _By the Eternal Father,_ he thinks. _This is what it means to have no fear._ He is full to the brim with a new certainty: that in all the world, for all his life, he will need nothing more than what he has right now.

.

Presently, resting in his embrace, she asks, “Was it your mother who called you Jacques? You never speak about your family.” 

“You know where I come from. I don’t like to talk about it.”

“And I told you I don’t care about that. I’m all the more proud of you for being who you are in spite of having a hard beginning. So, tell me. She called you ‘mon petit,’ I imagine. Or ‘my litle king.’ ‘My cabbage blossom.’ “

“ ‘Mon fils,’ mostly.” The memory turns his face hard. “She told a lot of stories. She liked to make things up. When I was very young I was fool enough to believe her.”

“What sort of stories?”

He can see her still if he lets himself. Dark hair tied back with a frayed string, sitting on her pallet -- or, more often in his memory, standing at the barred window with one arm around him. “The northern forests are wild,“ she is saying. “It’s nothing like Paris. The trees join arms overhead to make everything quiet and cool. Chimerae swoop in the treetops, their golden eyes and claws flashing, collecting birds’ eggs to feed their young. See the tallest spires out there? The trees where I grew up are taller even than that. My friends and I used to climb to the very tops and slide down the branches that swept all the way to the ground. Can you imagine it?” 

She takes him in her arms and twirls him around. “Let us say that we are there now -- the trees are all around us; the chimerae hidden among the leaves, watching, because they are shy of man. Do you hear the waterfall ahead? There's crystal water there, falling into a lake of purest blue.” 

He can always see it in his mind, everything she describes, but that's not enough. He wants to climb to the treetops like she did. He wants to thrust his arms into the crashing waterfall. “Will you take me there?“ he asks her eagerly. “Maman, promise me!” 

“In springtime,” she answers, coughing as she pulls him close. “Springtime is best.” 

Year after year, that was her answer. “Is it springtime yet?“ he would ask. “Soon,” she would say. Then, before he could complain, she would launch into another tale of her childhood. She had thousands. There was the time her heedless younger brother saw a _cheval mallet_ tossing his midnight-black mane in the tricky light of evening, and nearly came to ruin because of it. There was the day a bearded fish spoke to her as she bathed in the blue lake, and told her fortune.

“What did he say?“ he asks excitedly. They are on the straw pallet and he is hugging his knees with delight. 

“Ah. He said I would travel far from the northern woods, because it was my destiny to have a son born in Paris. And this boy would be special. He would grow up to be strong and honest. And one day he would return to the forest with his bride, and all the villagers and even the wild creatures would know that the valiant king, foretold in their stories, had come at last to rule them with wisdom and justice.”

His eyes grow big as saucers. “And you’ll come too? Won’t you, Maman?”

“Of course, mon fils,” she promises. She loops her arms around him, and he can feel her ribs beneath her sunken breasts, but she is warm and soon they will be heading north, together. 

 

“Well, I think it’s beautiful,” Lili says. “She wanted to make you happy.” 

“Parents should be honest,” he answers darkly. “There are no blue lakes and I'm not going to be king of anyplace. It’s wrong to lie to children.”

“Even to protect them?”

“Things are what they are. People have to recognize the truth and face up to it.”

He notices something on Lili’s cheek -- a faint bluish mark, nearly as big as a hand. “What is that?” he asks. He looks closer. There are marks on the side of her throat as well. 

"It’s nothing, I fell while carrying our washing to the widow Dubois." She moves a step away and turns so the gentle light from the church window no longer falls on that side of her. 

He feels a strange twisting beneath his heart, cold fingers of dread along his spine. "You should be more careful," he says, keeping his voice light. 

She makes no answer, just looks at him for a long moment as if taking his measure.

 

That night he thinks again of his mother. A day came when she could not get to her feet. He had to help her up, and she leaned on him as they made their way to the window. Above the prison wall he could see only rooftops with snow melting off them in a patchy balding way while the sky above was spread like a sheet of dirty ice. Springtime seemed out of reach.

“Maman, you are so weak," he said despairingly. "How will you ever take me to the forest?” 

“Oh, mon fils,” she said, but her gaze was distant. He was right in front of her but she was looking through him as if he were the thinnest glass.

"Maman?" he said, frightened. She made no answer. And, suddenly, he understood. He began to shout at her; he took her by her thin shoulders and shook her until her eyes rolled back. When he let her go, she sank down in a heap like a pile of sticks and rags, moaning. He looked around, and what he saw was bare and dirty -- there were no towering trees here, no lake of blue. It was a prison cell and she was a sick woman, a criminal he supposed, and he was just a boy without a destiny.

“Lies,” he said. “Nothing but lies. All this time.” He turned his back to her, cursing himself for the childish hopes he'd cherished so close to his heart.

A few weeks later his mother went away. A strange woman came into the cell and stood stiffly by the door, explaining things to him.

“What about my father?” he demanded. 

She was silent a moment. Then she said carefully, “He can’t have a child with him, where he is.” 

He had opened his mouth to protest. Surely his father wanted him; his mother had always said-- But he stopped himself. Things were what they were. He wasn't a stupid child anymore. His mother had said a lot of things, all of them as worthless as her nonsense about chimerae and forests and fish that told the future. 

That’s all right, he told her icily. Take me to the orphanage. I don't care.

There were flowers on the trees, the day he left the prison. Springtime, said the directrice. Isn‘t it pretty? He had looked down sullenly and refused to answer, and after a while she shrugged and let him alone. 

 

He pushes those memories away and thinks of Emilie. He tastes the name on his lips. Emilie Ravin, who loves him. 

He tries to recapture that moment under the elm when she said the words and he was sure of her. But it doesn’t seem so solid now that she's gone and he lies alone in his room -- no sound but the drunks reeling by in the alley, glass smashing, curses rising through the dark.


	8. happily ever after

The terrible day arrives at last. Valjean and Javert share the carriage ride to the church. Valjean's right hand is wrapped again, the sling back on his arm. Both men are attired for a wedding -- Valjean insisted on buying Javert a fine jacket despite his protests -- but from their faces any passerby would think them bound for a funeral. 

Finally Valjean clears his throat. “I would like to know your thoughts,” he says.

“You would not be pleased by them.”

“And now I am even more curious! Please, confess.”

Javert sighs, but there's a glint of humor in his eyes. “Today I am going to a wedding. A girl raised by a fugitive, and carrying the family name of a lamed cartier whom I know with certainty was childless, is today marrying a traitor to France. I'm trying not to think of how many laws have been broken for how many years, to accomplish this union. I've long since concluded that I should not interfere -- but still, I am sometimes surprised by the life I find myself in and the company I'm keeping.”

“Love is outside the laws of man,” Valjean says. “It is from God -- sometimes commanded by Him as a duty and sometimes bestowed by Him as His greatest gift. All that matters now, is that we should be happy for the children.”

“We _should_ be, true,” Javert says, raising an eyebrow. “But are we; that's the question. Are you all right, Valjean?” 

Valjean draws in an unsteady breath, and for a moment his countenance cracks apart like glass in the fire. “Not now,” he says in a hoarse whisper; “Don't let me think of what I'm losing. It is a day for joy, and a foolish old man cannot be allowed to cast his grim shadow over it. In a few hours it will be done. In a few hours--” He raises his eyes to Javert and gives him a desperate look. “Stay by my side, if you will. My leg… it is weak today.” Javert nods, and reaches out to grip his hand briefly. 

The carriage proceeds up a stately lane, and the two ride in silence, each lost in his own thoughts, until Valjean speaks again.

“Again I must thank you. I have counted on you too much, these past weeks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“I know why you've stood by me so faithfully.” At that, Javert looks up sharply; he finds Valjean regarding him with a steady gaze. “But Javert -- I must say this: it’s not your duty to serve me. And I would not want you to feel obligated by my loneliness.” 

“You have needed the help,” Javert says stiffly. "It has been no trouble." Under the carriage wheels, the road changes abruptly from neat cobbles to pitted dirt. The carriage bounces and the horses toss their heads. The driver tightens his grip on the reins. Javert sits uneasily in his seat. 

Valjean’s gaze is tinged with sadness. “There’s no debt to pay, Javert.” 

_No debt to pay?_ All his old fury towards the man rushes back. “You saved my life,” Javert snaps, "twice in a night; your leg was broken only because of me. So yes, of course I‘m in your debt; only you would have the audacity to claim otherwise--” 

“That is the old way of thinking,” Valjean says, unperturbed. “To keep the law and follow the rules and pay back what is given, this for this and that for that. But as I said: love is outside the law.”

“Love!” Javert snorts. “There’s no love between us. Don’t flatter yourself, Valjean.” Dread grips his spine. If there is no debt to pay, if he owes Valjean nothing, then-- then he is lost and there's no purpose left to him. 

“Love for Cosette put me outside the law and kept me there." Valjean's voice is so low he might be talking to himself. "For her I evaded justice. My duty to love and protect her superceded all else.” 

“But you came out the poorer for it.” It's a cruel thing to say, but Javert feels cruel right now. “Ten years on the run, looking over your shoulder -- and now, in the end, only to lose what you wanted most. I do not see the advantage.” 

Valjean tips his face up to the sky. For a long moment, he says nothing. Then, "Listen: Once, a long time ago, a traveler came to a small town. He had nowhere to sleep and the sky was dark. Finally a good man invited him to share his table and his hospitality. There was no debt between them, and the traveler was worse than undeserving -- he had a marked past; he was a violent man. Yet his host gave him a bed in the finest guest room, right beside his own.” 

“Foolish,” Javert pronounces.

“In fact, that’s exactly what the traveler said: ‘How do you know I won’t kill you in your sleep?’ But his host answered, ‘That is God’s affair.’ ”

Javert grimaces. “I hope he slept with one eye open and his rifle at the ready. Did he survive til morning?”

“Barely. But is that not the point? Love -- what God wants of us -- it isn’t safe. We are called on to risk everything for no guarantees of what it will bring us. But I will tell you this: Cosette has been a blessing to me, far more than I to her. Without her in my life, I'd have been--" His voice cracks and he turns violently away to face the roadside. 

“Love. Always a pretty tale at the start, but it generally has a savage ending." Javert sneers. "Tell me: are you happy, Valjean? Because your Cosette is delirious with joy. After all you've done, she makes not even a backward glance over her shoulder as she leaves you."

"I had her for ten years," Valjean murmurs. They have arrived; the carriage draws up in front of the church. "It’s enough. More than a man like me ever deserved.” 

The ceremony is lush, the music grand, the bride -- like every bride before her -- the most exquisite ever seen. As she mounts the carriage that will take the young couple home together to the rue des Filles de Calvaire, the bright face of Marius and the gray one of Valjean are both wet with tears.


	9. promising

“Listen,” she whispers. “We have to go, and it has to be soon. My father is planning something. I have no doubt of it.” 

“Emilie!” He can feel the waters rising around him. “We can’t do such a thing in haste. We need more time, to prepare, to discuss it--” 

“I have been thinking of nothing else for weeks,” she says fiercely. “I have told you what was coming; but you act deaf and blind. Now I am saying that there is no more time. I have a little money. Also there is jewelry -- it is well and truly mine, left to me by my mother. It will be easy to conceal while we travel, and easy to sell. And you: have you saved anything?” 

“Well, yes,“ he says. “I have saved from my salary for as long as I have been working. It would be enough to live on for a few months.” 

"A few months is all we'd need, to get established somewhere." She takes his hands, and the heat that passes between them is enough to sear his skin. "Jacques. Look at me."

He does. She is firm and warm as living stone, and as unyielding.

Could it really be done? 

He has always imagined that someday they might be together in his room above the barber shop. The father would loom over their marriage like a malignant, stifling shadow; they would dine with him three times a week and Javert would work under him forever, his career defined by what the old man wanted, what he would allow. It would be enough, though. If only the old man would let him have Emilie it would be enough, and he would show his gratitude forever.

But now, like an arrow of light through clouds, he dares imagine something else: a glimmer of color in the far distance; a life free of the hulking, oppressive presence of Inspector Ravin. His breath hitches in his chest. "We could leave," he whispers. "We really could. You and I. We could--" _We could get married,_ he almost said -- but he hasn't asked her properly yet, and it seems presumptious to say it so boldly now.

“Where would we go?” he asks, gripping her arm. 

“Anywhere! Think of it, Jacques -- we could go to the sea, the mountains, anywhere in France. I’ve always wanted to live by a lake, like in your mother‘s stories. Can you not imagine it? We‘ll make a home of our own. We‘ll work hard but we’ll be free and we’ll be happy. We’ll have a child someday and we'll love her and watch her grow; just imagine--”

Yes! He can see it! 

She begins to talk faster. “Come to my home tomorrow night. Stand in the street outside. My father will be at home, of course. He often stays up late -- you’ll have to watch for all the lamps to be put out, and then wait another hour to be sure he‘s well asleep. I’ll be at my window. You remember, I showed you it once? It’s the one that overlooks the side alley. Bring a candle. Light it, just for a minute, when you think it's safe. I’ll light mine in return so you‘ll know I‘m ready. Then I‘ll come out.” 

“But,” he frowns, “how will you get down the stairs and out without him hearing? He‘ll saddle his horse and be after us; we‘ll never make it.” 

She is radiant. “Easy. I’ll throw my things down to you from the window. And then I’ll jump.” His look of dismay makes her laugh. “Trust me. I grew up climbing trees in my cousin’s orchard in the summers, all the way to the treetops, higher than you would believe. I’ve come down the fast way plenty of times when a branch broke under me. I always land on my feet like a cat. I’m not afraid, Jacques.” 

One look at her and he knows she means it. 

But-- if they run he won't be able to come back. Everything he's built here, so carefully, will be gone in an instant: all his bridges burning behind him. 

"Jacques?"

“It’s just--” He looks down. “Well, I’ve a new assignment from Inspector Magronne. It might mean the promotion I’ve been waiting for.” It sounds weak and he hates himself for saying it, even while the words are leaving his mouth. 

She takes his hands and raises her eyes to his. “Listen to me. We are young and we can work; we can make the life we want. I promise it. We‘ll be together.” 

She is so sure.

“Am I not worth the risk?” she demands. 

Helplessly, he tries to match her certainty. “You’re worth any risk,” he says, and kisses her. “But Lili-- Emilie -- if, if something happens and I can’t come, then-- you’ll still meet me here, won’t you? Next week, at this time, as always?” 

“You'll come tomorrow night,” she answers. Her chin is up and there's iron in her gaze. "I'll be waiting."


	10. lies told to children

Javert isn’t one for parties. This one in particular seems to have more than its share of ancient, paper-skinned ladies in large hats. Fortunately the Gillenormand home has been overtaken by enough chaos that he can make himself invisible, or nearly so. He finds Valjean a chair and remains beside him as he promised. 

A hat approaches him, its extravagant ostrich feather swooping dangerously close to his eyes. “Look at those flowers,” exclaims a voice within it. A companion hat, thickly done in egret, sails at its side. The ostrich feather's lady sweeps her hand grandly toward the floral spires that adorn every table, and motions toward the garlands that hang over the door. “No expense spared! I suppose the families have a fortune between them. Is it true that the girl is an heiress?” The egret plumes all bob excitedly.

Javert casts an amused glance toward Valjean, but his companion has a glassy distant stare. 

Cosette is making the rounds among the guests with Pontmercy at her side, and Valjean, watching her, slides deeper into melancholy. “I held her hand in the woods the night I found her in Montfermeil. Such a cold little hand, and no gloves. Those innkeepers were wicked people.”

Javert remembers the town with distaste. Montfermeil -- a scraped-together heap, combining the debauchery of the city with the ignorance and superstition of the countryside. He remembers the obsequious innkeeper whose lies threw him off Valjean’s scent. He finds it hard to picture Cosette growing to womanhood in that place. What would she have become, had Valjean not come to her rescue? The thought makes Javert frown. He has come across many debased women in his life. Distractedly, he picks at the enormous floral centerpiece, turns a rose into a heap of stripped petals, then tears the petals into shreds. 

Valjean gets stiffly to his feet. “I need to have a word with Pontmercy.”

Javert watches the two men withdraw down the hall. Both of them walk awkwardly, still nursing the injuries they sustained on the same night, in pursuit of their different but equally preposterous causes. They are two men who defy order, and make trouble, and jump haphazardly into places they should stay well out of -- and both of them got exactly what they deserved. He's irritated by the similarities between them. 

The bride spots him sitting alone. Her cheeks are warm from dancing. “M. Javert!” she exclaims, coming over. He rises to bow and she throws her arms around him impetuously. “I am so glad you are here.”

“May I congratulate you, Madame?” 

“ ‘Madame,’ ” she says, laughing. “It still sounds strange to me! I have been looking forward to dancing with you, but you have been hiding yourself -- you, and Papa too. And now he has taken my Marius away somewhere. I am very angry with them both! Come, let us show them how little we miss them.”

“I am afraid I do not dance.”

“But you will, just today -- to oblige me.” She dimples at him, and there is no resisting her. Fortunately the steps of the minuet have not changed since he was twenty-four, and he fumbles his way through without crushing her slippered feet.

After the dance he thanks her. “You look very happy, madame. I am glad to see it.’

“Yes,” she sighs, “everything is perfect! Except, I only regret… well, I keep thinking about my mother, and wishing she were here, or that I remembered her. It's my wedding day; I should have something of my mother, shouldn't I?" Her lower lip trembles slightly, much to Javert's alarm. Then she tries to laugh. "But there, I’m being silly!”

“Do you not know anything of her, Madame? What has your father told you?” Valjean should be hearing this. The man has been lying to his charge for ten years; it is immoral. It should be a crime in itself. 

“He has said nothing -- he doesn’t like to speak of her, I think. I used to wonder about her, and make up stories. And just lately I am wondering whether she had a wedding like this, whether she loved as I do, and whether... whether she was glad to be my mother.” She looks embarrassed then, and tosses her head as if to make light of herself. He is not fooled by the gesture. There is a little girl's hunger in her words, and all her high spirits on this day are not enough to hide it.

She looks at him. Something of his thoughts must be showing in his face, for she peers closer, and suddenly-- "Why, M. Javert!" she gasps. “Do you-- do you know something? When you knew Papa -- my uncle I mean -- long ago: did he tell you anything of my mother?” 

Javert cannot come up with any reply, so he pretends not to hear -- an unworthy ploy for a generally honest man, but a useful one. “Thank you for the honor of the dance. And look, there are M. Fauchelevent and M. Pontmercy, returning this way.” 

The serendipitous reappearance of the groom has the desired effect, and cooing endearments follow as the young couple is reunited. But Marius is not completely himself -- he looks agitated and keeps glancing over his shoulder at Valjean with a dark expression on his young face. Valjean retreats to his chair against the wall and keeps his head bowed. 

“Valjean! What’s between you and Pontmercy?”

“It’s nothing,” says Valjean. “My hand is paining me and I'd like to go. Do you mind hailing a carriage?”

 

On the way home they talk little, and Javert finds himself more and more irked by his conversation with Cosette. Finally he says brusquely, “She wants to know about her mother. Why have you never told her the truth, in all these years?” 

Valjean stammers. “It’s better she not be burdened with such knowledge. I wanted her childhood to stay innocent.” 

“Things are what they are," Javert snorts. "She’s the child of a whore who died in the hospital at Montreuil-sur-Mer. Her so-called father -- or uncle, or whatever you are now claiming -- has lived as a fugitive from justice; and neither you nor the girl is any sort of Fauchelevent. We can both allow that you were probably right to take her in, and that I may have been wrong to stand in your way. Even I am forced to admit it. So why do you still insist on keeping her ignorant?” 

Valjean shrinks under his gaze. “It doesn’t matter now. I have no right to her. I will withdraw from her life, as much as I can tolerate, and she need never know of her mother's sadness or my sins. She's safe forever from the stain of my past. Marius will take care of her and give her everything she needs.” 

“You think that’s best.”

“I am certain of it.”

Javert looks at him for a long while, frowning. “Parents shouldn’t lie to their children,” he mutters.


	11. they run away together

It doesn't take him any time to pack. There is the money, a change of clothes, a candle, his pistol. He folds his uniform into the pack as neatly as he can manage. It's paid up and he can’t bear to leave it. It might prove useful somewhere; who knows? Anything could happen now. 

He sets his room in order, takes a last look around, and extinguishes the lamp before he leaves. Down the stairs and out past the barbershop he walks, heading south. His feet know the way. He’s walked past her home many times, far more often than she knows, and looked up at that window.

And now. He shivers with excitement. He still can’t quite believe they’re doing this. 

It‘s two miles through the streets of Paris, streets which never sleep. He passes a few workers and a great many idlers. Pigeons roost above storefronts. On the Rue Martin, a clutch of half-grown boys surges out of an alley at a dead run, startling him. They clatter past as if he isn’t there. 

He and Emilie, the two of them: where will they go? He’s a meticulous planner but this time there’s no plan. She’ll jump into his arms and then they’ll run; he can see no farther than that. Where will he sleep tomorrow? How will he provide for her? It's like staring at a wall in the dark. 

But it will be all right. They’ll be together. 

His thoughts turn and turn as the streets unroll beneath him. Only half a mile to go. His boots hitting stone have a sound of authority. He’s a man going places. 

Soon he’ll be in the alley below her window. He’ll wait for darkness to swallow the house; he’ll wait as long as it takes to know the old man is sleeping soundly. They’ll signal with the candles. She’ll jump down from that window into her garden beneath. 

But it’s a high window, almost impossibly high, as he remembers it. If she falls wrong, if she is hurt; if she cries out-- then every lamp will go on inside the house, and the old man will come out bellowing, armed to the teeth no doubt. Jacques will pull her to her feet and then the two of them will be off and running for their lives; no turning back. 

In just a little while, his fate will be sealed: goodbye to everything he knows. 

Well: they’ll manage. They’ll get away and eventually they'll reach some kind of safety, maybe in a little town where the old man isn’t likely to have connections. Jacques will have a job and together they’ll scrape by. Emilie won’t have to work, he’ll see to it. He’ll take care of everything. 

It’ll be hard though. It won’t be what she’s used to: steady money coming in, father the assistant chief for the whole Paris department. A brick house, a woman who does the washing, the security of knowing what lies ahead. How long will it be until he can give her those things?

She’ll be fretful. She‘ll look at him with quiet unhappiness during the long evenings, and he‘ll know he's failed her. There will be a young man on the sidewalk someday, quick with a joke and a compliment, making her laugh, reaching to kiss her hand. There will be a morning he wakes up to find her gone. 

How long can he expect her to keep loving him, anyway?

His feet take him to the last corner. This is her street; here he will make the last turn. But his feet don't turn. They carry him straight on instead. They do the choosing, not him. He doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t. He doesn’t think about her waiting at her window, the candle in her hand, unlit, her fingers clenching it too hard, growing stiff from clenching it. He doesn't think about her bewilderment and fatigue rising all through the night, the bleakness, blackness, and exhaustion she must feel, or her slumped back and the searching bleary gaze she will maintain at the window hour by hour until dawn finally comes to end her vigil. He will not consider those things.

He finds himself directly under Notre Dame when the churchbells chime the hour. The sound is so loud he has to sink to his knees, moaning, and put his hands over his ears. He stays like that a long time.

Then he walks home. 

 

He is afraid for the week to pass; afraid of the next time they’ll meet under the elm. What will he tell her? Possibilities flit through his mind. He could claim he was sick, or injured, or called away on police business. He considers shooting himself in the leg and saying he was on his way to meet her when a pack of half-grown kids burst out of an alley on the Rue Martin, one of them waving a pistol-- Or, he could simply not show up. That would be the easiest.

He won't do any of those things. He’ll meet her as always. He is an honest man. He'll face her and tell her the truth. 

Emilie, it was too risky.  


The odds are against us.  


Let‘s wait a little longer, maybe your father will change in the end and allow us to marry. Then we can stay right here and be together. Let‘s see what happens. 

Emilie, we both know you won’t love me forever. 

 

Four days later he hears the news from one of the other men. “They say we all have to come to the swearing-in ceremony tomorrow for the new assistant chief. I can think of better ways to spend a morning.” 

“Oh,” says Jacques, only half listening. And then, “What?“ 

“The ceremony. For Ravin‘s replacement. Can’t think how they found someone so fast; his transfer only came through a couple days ago. I suppose it was in the works for a while. Not that I’ll miss the old fire-breather.”

“Ravin’s transferred? Out of Paris?” His throat feels parched and it hurts to speak.

“Requested it, they‘re saying. Went away up north, took over as chief somewhere. Two days ago. You hadn’t heard?” 

 

That night he finds the courage to walk to her home -- now, he thinks bitterly; now when it no longer matters. Below her window, her garden blooms on in mockery of her absence, a streak of glory that puts all the surrounding street to shame. A tiny, elderly lady, back bent like a question mark, is sweeping the walkway with fierce strokes. “We’re already rented,” she calls out to him sharply as if shooing away a stray dog. “There’s no rooms here.” He nods. Before turning away, he takes one last look up at her window. 

It isn’t as high as he remembered. She would have made the jump with ease, he realizes now. A girl like her. 

 

His room above the barber shop looks different when he gets home. The aggressive ugliness of the place overwhelms him, so that he has to close his eyes to keep from seeing it. Somehow it never bothered him before.

 

What is left? He has his duty. That’s very important. In fact, he decides, it's the most important thing there is. He sets his sights on improving his lot, calculating the promotions he can attain if he works hard at it. He could make Chief Inspector someday. He has an important job, he reminds himself. He finds little satisfaction now in frivolous pursuits. He has no need of friends or women, now that he has grown beyond those things. He works hard and doggedly. His superiors notice, and soon he is promoted to second-tier, just as he had hoped. He takes the extra ten francs a week and saves it. As he advances in his career, he becomes more and more certain that he did the right thing by staying in Paris and not running off like an impulsive child. At the Prefecture his star is rising. When, rarely, an assignment takes him into the vicinity of the church of St. Claire, he makes a wide detour to avoid it.

With his promotions, he could now move to a better place in a better part of town. But why bother? He is very used to his room above the barber-shop. It suits him fine. 

He finds out the name of the town the old man transferred to. St. Margarethe, it’s called -- an industrial city in the north, only half a day's journey by coach. He could go there someday when he has a day off, and find Emilie. It wouldn't be hard. He could watch her in secret and follow her through the streets. She wouldn't even have to know. Perhaps he might buy a candle, the kind sold outside churches, and stand below her window in the dark, holding it aloft, waiting for the moment when she'd notice his light and gasp with recognition and amazement. She would run out and he'd be waiting, and he'd say what he longs to say: that he was wrong, he was scared, he is sorry. 

But that would be silly. Certainly she hates him. More importantly: he‘s needed right where he is. There is his duty to think of. 

That’s the important thing, duty. 

 

Time goes by. 

He receives another promotion and with it, a transfer. “Montreuil-sur-Mer?” he asks. “Where’s that?” When they tell him it's south, a pain shoots through him in a place he'd thought long healed; it's like the thrust of a bayonet. His first thought is to decline the move. He doesn‘t want to go in the wrong direction. 

But that's folly. “Well,” he says. “Good.” Really, he’s happy to put more distance between himself and the idle mistakes of his youth. No use clinging to illusions. 

As he latches the door of his little room and goes out past the barbershop for the last time, he can't help but remember the night sixteen years before when he hurried down this same street in the dark, intending never to return. He had been so young then and so nervous. There had been a strange hot blooming in his chest, like the opening of an exotic flower.

When he looks back on all his life, he thinks mostly of that last street-corner where he did not turn. It was a fulcrum of some kind, he understands. In choosing the straight path, he threw the balance. And now: things are what they are.


	12. certain hardy perennials

At the Rue de l'Homme Arme, Valjean gets out with only the slightest stagger betraying his weak leg. Javert gets out too. Valjean doesn't need him -- he can manage the stairs quite well on his own by now -- but Javert can't stand the thought of letting him walk into the empty home alone. 

Cosette’s room has been stripped bare. Even the maid Toussaint's departure is keenly felt. She cleaned the home so fiercely before she left, that it looks as though no one but Valjean has ever lived there.

Valjean walks through the house, from empty room to empty room, a grieving man who can't stop counting up his losses. Javert is sorry for the other man's pain, but there's nothing he can do. He has carried in one of the elegant floral centerpieces from the reception and now he sets it on the dining table. Cosette had pressed it into Valjean's hands as they were leaving.

"This is to brighten up the dear place, and to make you think of me while I'm thinking of you," she had told him. "We'll see each other -- oh! every day!"

Finally Valjean, his steps dragging, joins Javert at the table. “I am glad to have you here, my old friend," he mumbles. 

Somehow Valjean’s grief has become Javert's burden too. He never intended to care about this man. He wonders what Valjean will do tonight after he is gone. Perhaps he should offer to stay the night; it would do Valjean good to have company. They could sit quietly together the way they often do, and in the morning they could share breakfast. He could try to get Valjean interested in things besides the girl. But Toussaint has moved through the rooms like a brisk, efficient wind. Only Valjean's bedroom can still be slept in. 

Still. He cannot leave the man alone like this.

He reaches out for the centerpiece, distractedly pulling out a rose as he did at the reception. It’s pinkish, or some such color. As the long stem draws free, a small white card is dislodged from the arrangment and flutters down onto the table. Javert picks it up. "Fleurs du Ciel," it says across the top in bold script. Under that, there's an address on the Rue des Palmes. And under that--

"Javert? Is something wrong?"

Javert is turning the card around in his hands. He stares at it.

"Javert?"

He hears the voice only as a distant noise. "But how?" he mutters. He looks at the back of the card, and then the front, and then the back again. Then he fixes the centerpiece itself with a narrow stare, as if it might be complicit in some type of criminal activity. 

"In God's name, what is it?" 

He looks up at Valjean with a blank and baffled gaze. Then he drops his eyes to the card once more.

There's a delicate drawing at the bottom: a scarlet lily, twined around the letter E.


	13. on the rue des Palmes

“The flowers,” Javert croaks. “Wh-- Where did they come from?”

Valjean, jolted out of his bleak mood by sheer astonishment, gapes back at him. “What, these flowers? I suppose M. Gillenormand had them delivered for the reception. Though I recall him saying that Mlle. Gillenormand was seeing to the food and the little touches. Javert, what on earth is wrong? You look pale as a man staring into his own grave.” Javert's hands have not stopped turning the small white card over and over. 

“Wrong? No! Nothing! But-- I have to go!” Javert leaps up, crushing the card in his hand. He is nearly to the door when he wheels around, mutters, "Ah! My hat." Suddenly he catches himself up short. “I’m sorry, Valjean -- will you be all right?” He bows hurriedly and goes out without waiting for an answer. The last thing he sees as he leaves is Valjean’s pained, bewildered face. 

 

He has only the faintest knowledge of where the rue des Palmes is. The carriage driver tries to make conversation but Javert waves his hand irritably for silence. Every minute or two, he slips the crumpled card out of his pocket and stares at it again. He believes it is real only as long as he has it before him; every time he puts it away, he becomes sure he is going mad. 

There’s no telling what the symbol on the card signifies. He tries to reason with himself. Perhaps a lily woven through a letter is a common conceit among flower shops. Yes; that is probably so. He’ll arrive at the address and find nothing of interest - just a little place with a weak-chinned, portly man standing behind the counter in a too-tight suit, selling daisies to young fops with girls on their arms. He'll realize the little drawing is nothing but a coincidence. He'll go home feeling-- what? Satisfied; that’s what he‘ll feel. He'll have resolved the question of the lily, and that will be that, and he'll be simply satisfied. 

It is a shame to waste a franc on a carriage ride for nothing. But it’s a fine evening. He is merely out enjoying the air. 

They're entering a section of Paris he isn't very familiar with. It's a good area, low in crime and thus never of any interest to Javert. The rue des Palmes isn't a big street, but it's lined with shops of quality and many of the strolling pedestrians look well-heeled. Since it’s near the dinner hour, a few of the stores are already closed for the day.

The driver pulls to a stop. “Number 29; isn't that what you said? It's right over there.” 

It's a handsome, glass-fronted shop with flowers in all the windows. The sign above it looks new and is elegantly inscribed with the words FLEURS du CIEL in gold lettering.

The first “E” has a scarlet lily woven through it.

Javert intends to rise, but can't quite manage it. Dread and excitement have combined to turn his legs to jelly. As he watches from the carriage, a young man enters the shop. He comes out a minute later carrying a clutch of roses and wearing an expression of shy delight.

The driver shoots him an impatient look. “Want I should stay and wait while you buy flowers for the missus?” 

“What?” says Javert. “No. Yes! Wait here.” He presses another franc in the man's hand and jumps out, straightening his coat. He walks, not toward the shop, but towards a café on the opposite side of the street. Pulling his hat down low over his brow and tucking his chin into his collar, he searches out a table that will give him some cover and a clear view. 

Just as he prepares to sit, the flower-shop door opens abruptly and two women come out, nicely dressed, chatting to each other. One is young and the other perhaps middle-aged. Javert cannot see her face -- partly because the younger woman is taller and closer to him, but also because something has gone wrong with his vision. The street has taken on a wavery look, as if someone has dashed water into his eyes. Beneath his feet, the pavement seems to be tilting on its side. 

He grabs hold of the table. Sweat springs out in beads on his face. He tries to keep an eye on the two women, but they melt into the strolling crowd.

"Monsieur?" says a passing waiter, eyeing him curiously.

The ground steadies and his vision returns to normal. He stares dumbly at the crowd of strangers drifting past him. He finds his handkerchief and mops his face. What's wrong with him? He heels about and returns to the carriage. “Home.” He barks his address at the driver. “Just take me home.” 

“Your missus is sure to be angry, you coming home without her flowers,” the driver observes darkly.


	14. the uniform

Knocking at Valjean’s door the next morning, Javert is nervous about how he‘ll be received after his sudden departure the night before. He has been practicing an apology on the way over. 

Valjean welcomes him in. There's a hollow look to him, as if all his inner parts have started caving in on themselves. The small black trunk is open on the table, and the little set of mourning clothes is spread around it. 

“I remember what you said once -- that it’s no good thinking of the past,” Valjean mumbles. “But she was so charming when she was small, and it was just the two of us--”

Javert pretends he doesn’t hear the break in the voice. “You’ll still see her,” he says. 

“Maybe," Valjean answers distantly. “I’ve been too selfish, anyway; trying to keep what was never mine.” Then he adds, “I’m not just talking of Cosette.”

“What do you mean, then?”

Valjean rubs his jaw. “It came to me last evening, after you left, that you have a life of your own and it waits for you. You have places to be besides here. And the city needs you -- you should be back at work. Why have you not returned? Is it because of me?” 

The question is so unexpected that Javert has no answer ready. “I -- I cannot. I resigned that night, before I went to the bridge.” 

Valjean looks unsurprised. “Of course; I assumed that much. Your sense of order would demand no less. But you are alive and fit. You would rather be out there--” and he nods toward the street “--than in here. So, why do you not go back to it?”

Javert has never thought of going back. He closed that door forever when he wrote his letter of resignation. To walk through the big entryway again in his polished boots and inhale the scent of ink and gunpowder and simply declare he has changed his mind, as if he had the right to-- it's not something he would ever do. 

“I’ve resigned,” he repeats. “Someone has surely been promoted into my position; there wouldn‘t be a place for me anymore. And if I went back, there would be-- questions.”

“You have an agile mind. You’ll think of answers.”

“Well, but what if you should need me?” 

“Is it your intention to wait on me forever? You are a free man, Javert; I told you there is no debt. Anyway, my leg is healed.” 

Javert can feel himself being cornered. He says, slowly, “Things are what they are. I no longer work for the police. I have enough money saved to get by if I’m careful, and -- well -- it's done. I‘ve resigned. I can‘t go back.”

Valjean looks at him, a hint of amusement around his mouth. “If I didn’t know better, I would say you are making excuses.”

“And why the devil would I do that?” Javert snaps. 

“Because you’re afraid of asking for something and being told no.” 

Javert sputters. "Ridiculous!" 

“Prove me wrong," says Valjean, smiling gently. "Put on your uniform tomorrow morning; go to the Prefecture and ask to be reinstated. Don‘t pretend that isn‘t what you want.” 

Javert has the sense he’s walked into a surprise attack and found himself disarmed before he could draw his weapon. He resorts to hurling pebbles. “I have only the one uniform,” he mutters, “and it smells like the Seine.“ 

“How fortunate that there is an excellent laundress down the street,” Valjean replies. “Bring your uniform when you return this evening. She’ll have it ready by noon tomorrow -- and it will smell like sunshine.” 

“Valjean!” Javert cries. “Enough of this. You are not entirely well yet; you may still require help, and I, I should be around, just in case...” 

“No,” the other man answers quietly. “I know you’d stay at my side as long as I let you. But I am quite recovered. In fact, I am planning to take a trip soon. I may be gone a long time and-- I would like to know that you are well and your future is in place, before I leave. So, please do this, for me if not for yourself. I insist.” He adds, “Have you any more excuses to make, or have we dealt with them all?” 

Javert casts about for another line of defense, but all his troops have been put to the sword. Still, he’s mentally exercised now, and unwilling to surrender. 

“Oh?” he exclaims. "Excuses, is that what I'm making? And what about you? What about that hand?”

It’s a flanking maneuver, and has the desired effect of throwing Valjean momentarily into confusion. “My hand? What about it?” 

Javert reaches out and gives Valjean’s right hand a violent twist. “There’s no injury there,” he says. “There never was. You feigned it, to avoid signing the name Fauchelevent to Cosette’s marriage papers. So don’t talk to me of people who make up excuses.”

Valjean's discomfiture is satisfying. “That’s different," he says warily. "I’m protecting her. I can‘t sign a false name on a document like that.” 

Javert, feeling the tide of battle turning, presses his advantage. “Before you criticize me, look to yourself. You’ve kept that girl wrapped in lies, ignorant of her own life -- of even her own name! Children shouldn’t be forced to drink their parents' fairy tales.”

“Oh, is that so! And what does a man like you know about children, or what's best for them?” 

Javert gives a short bark of laughter, but there‘s no humor in his eyes, only a spark of anger. “Nothing, M. le maire; not a thing. Fine! I will bring my uniform here this very afternoon, and tomorrow I’ll go speak to my superiors at the Prefecture. And in return: you’ll do what's right and tell that girl the truth. Is it a bargain?” Valjean doesn’t answer. “As I thought,” Javert sneers. "I'll be back within the hour. Perhaps your courage will be greater then." 

He returns an hour later and hurls the uniform down before Valjean. The next day, much to his dismay, Valjean hands it back to him, clean and pressed. He examines it minutely but cannot find anything wrong with it. His anger and pride have put his back against the wall. There is nothing he can do now but put the damn thing on and go to the Prefecture headquarters. And so he does it, grimly buttoning his cuffs and straightening his collar and marching off to the place he knows so well he could get there blindfolded. He mounts the stairs and passes through the tall doors. A new clerk is sitting at the monumental front desk beside the statue he loves of the Angel of Righteousness standing erect and proud with her sword held high. And only now, too late, does he see what lies beyond: all the faces of his former colleagues and superiors, staring his way in astonishment. 


	15. flowers from heaven

Inspector Javert descends the steps of the police headquarters. His uniform is drenched with sweat and his heart hasn‘t yet stopped pounding. But he‘s exultant.

Valjean will be delighted. He’s sure to make some infuriating remark.

But Javert hesitates. He thinks of Valjean sitting alone, fingering Cosette's old mourning clothes in the light of a burning-down candle. Certainly Valjean will rejoice at the good news, but-- perhaps after all, Javert should not go to him crowing in triumph. His reinstatement with the Prefecture will bring only more loneliness to a man who seems already unable to bear his daughter's loss. And Javert's exultation will be a heartless contrast to the other man's melancholy.

He signals to a passing carriage driver. "Where to?" the man asks.

Javert tells him.

.

He settles himself at the most strategic table in the café. Almost at once he realizes his error. He is still wearing his uniform, and on a street like this, an officer at a cafe table appears both obvious and ridiculous. It has taken only two months away from the job to make him forget everything he knows.

The thought makes him smile, despite his nerves. Soon he'll be back in practice. He orders a drink. He waits. 

Fleurs du Ciel is a busy establishment. Who are all these people - young men, old men, girls - wasting their coins on a handful of colored blossoms? He himself has never bought flowers in his life. What's the point, when they can't last more than a few days? It's the same as money dropped in the gutter.

He's unable to see anything past the swinging door. He sips at his glass of water and orders no food. The waiter wants to be rude, Javert can tell, but the uniform makes him hold his tongue. In the late afternoon, a cart draws up in front of the shop. The bay gelding up front stamps his hoof and the driver shouts something through his thatched beard. Then the shop door opens, and--

Javert leaps to his feet. His hip collides with the table edge, making the water glass go over. But he doesn't notice. 

.

It would be wrong to say she hasn’t changed. Her step is heavier, her waist thicker, her hair darker than he remembers it. Her face isn't the one in his memories; she hasn't stayed twenty-two. 

And yet.

"Emilie," he whispers. The word is round in his mouth, like a ripe berry.

Her arms are full of flowers and she clambers up on the cart and lays them down. She hitches up her skirts as she jumps off. Two men on the street pause to stare at the sight. A girl comes out too, similarly laden, and the two women weave back and forth piling the cart with masses of greenery and color. Emilie shouts something to the cart’s driver. Javert can't make out the words or his answer, but her laughter reaches him and it's so familiar he can't get his breath. 

She lays down a last armful and then, instead of leaping down, climbs to the front and takes a seat alongside the driver. He slaps the reins across his horse, and the cart rattles off. In a little while, it's out of sight. 

Javert keeps staring down the street at the point where it disappeared. He can't think what to do. The spilled drink has made a small lake on his blue tablecloth. A miniature waterfall trickles off the edge of the table into a puddle at his feet. 

He must get a handle on himself. She’s a married woman, surely. Anyway, she won‘t remember him; except perhaps to hate him. It's like he told Valjean about Cosette: it doesn't do any good to revisit the past. Things are what they are. He should leave her to her happiness and not look back.

On any other day, he probably would see the wisdom in his own counsel and do just that. But his success at the Prefecture earlier has put a fire in his blood. 

Pushing back his hat, he strides across the street.


	16. stay the night

“May I help you, Monsieur?“

“Chief Inspector,” he corrects. He's staring into the face of the young woman who helped fill the cart. “I have a few questions for you. There’s an investigation under way.”

He hasn’t given the first thought to what he’s going to say. 

“Investigation? Of what?” She narrows her eyes. He’s accustomed to people being intimidated when he approaches in his uniform, but this girl doesn’t look scared of him at all. Suspicious, is more like it.

“There have been a series of attacks on this side of town. The police have reason to believe that the man responsible has access to--” He glances around. “To flowers. High-quality flowers, such as one might find in a shop like this.”

She looks at him dubiously. “Access to flowers,” she repeats, putting a hand on her hip.

Clearly he has lost something of his intimidating presence in the past two months. “What is your name, mademoiselle?”

“It's Madame. Mme. Marie Torneau.”

“And your position here?” He is suddenly very afraid that he might be talking to Emilie's daughter.

“Shop assistant, of course. How do you know he has access to flowers? Your man carried flowers while attacking people? Heavens.” 

“I’m not at liberty to discuss details, madame. Tell me: who is the owner of this shop?” 

“Mlle. Ravin. Well, wait. Are you saying the attacks were carried out using a poisonous extract? We have digitalis here and nicotinia. But they're found in lots of other shops too, especially this season."

He‘s not listening. The word _mademoiselle_ is still ringing sweetly in his ears.

“Emilie Ravin?"

"Yes.”

Saying her name aloud once is glorious, but it only stirs his hunger to say it again. “What can you tell me about her: Mlle. Emilie Ravin?”

“You can't mean she's under suspicion?” Marie Torneau frowns and recoils slightly, looking less intimidated than ever.

“Of course not,” Javert snaps. He’s losing control of the interrogation. “This is all part of a routine inquiry.” 

“Oh, very well, but you‘re wasting your time. Mlle. Ravin has no part in any attacks. We‘re a shop of quality. I can’t tell you much about her, anyway: she grew up in Paris; she was away a long time and just moved back a few months ago and opened Fleurs du Ciel.”

“There’s no husband?” he asks. He wishes to be absolutely clear on that point. 

“None she admits to.”

“So, she - she lives with her father, then?”

Marie Torneau shakes her head, making her pert curls bounce. “Not that I can see why you should care, but no. Her father died just last winter. That’s how come she came back to Paris. She took care of the old bear for years, in some terrible place up in the north. Never had a life of her own, for she was his only child, you see. When he finally kicked it, she took the inheritance and moved back here and opened this shop. Her lifelong dream, as she tells it. And look how well we’re doing.” She preened visibly, indicating the laden shelves with a wave.

 _Thirty years spent under her father’s thumb._

“Are you?” he asks, looking around. “Doing well?” The riot of color and scent is making him slightly dizzy.

“Oh, yes -- just opened last season, and already she's the talk of Paris, with special orders coming in faster than she can fill them. Mlle. Ravin has a gift. Everyone says so.”

“I am sure,” Javert murmurs. 

Mme. Torneau looks toward the door as another customer arrives. “Look," she says. "If you want to talk to my employer, she’ll be back tomorrow. But right now she’s off decorating for a wedding, and then she’s going directly to do some work on a garden she’s putting in somewhere. I’d like to help with that part of the business too, but, ‘not a proper job for a woman,’ as my husband says.” She shrugs. “You know, I can’t think how this is any help to your investigation.”

“We are eliminating suspects,” Javert says in a severe tone. “Are there any suspicious men with access to the shop? Perhaps someone… _close…_ to Mlle. Ravin?”

“I couldn’t say,” answers Marie Torneau, closing her lips firmly as if to suggest she finds the question in bad taste. 

There are a thousand more things he wants to know, but the set of her mouth warns him it’s time to leave. “Many thanks for your assistance, Mme. Torneau. Best if you don’t discuss this with anyone.” 

Walking out, he fights the urge to whistle.

 

“Valjean! They said yes!” Despite his intentions to break the news gently, the words are out of his mouth before he’s even through Valjean's door. “I start tomorrow.” 

Valjean looks up from the chair by the fire. “I am glad for you, my friend.” 

His smile does little to ease the drawn look of his features. Javert is instantly chagrined. He hasn’t given Valjean more than a passing thought since he went out. Has he spent the day in that chair? 

“What's wrong? Did you not visit with Cosette?” 

“For a few minutes only. She was going out with her husband for a dinner appointment, and I did not wish to keep her.” 

“Well. There’s tomorrow, then.”

“Of course.” 

They dine together. Valjean picks at his food. Javert tries to entertain him, but he finds conversation difficult: he has no thoughts for anything but Emilie, and he is unwilling to speak of her aloud. So both men are mostly silent, though for different reasons. The door to Cosette's old bedroom is ajar, the bare bed visible. Valjean looks toward it too many times.

At the end of the meal, Valjean rises to see him out. He wishes him well and congratulates him again on being reinstated to his old position. Javert waits for the familiar invitation to next night's dinner, but Valjean, for once, does not make the offer. He looks smaller than usual, his shoulders no longer mighty, his chest hollowing out. Javert wishes desperately to go home and be alone and close his eyes and think of Emilie. But--

His hand on the door, he turns. He says what he must say. The words don‘t come easily.

“Valjean. You should not be here alone. Would it be all right if-- Would you like me to stay the night?”

The suggestion makes Valjean smile a little. “I would be glad of the company. But it is not possible. Only the one bed is usable.”

“Yes,” Javert replies. “I know.”


	17. the catacombs and the resurrected

The following morning, Javert makes sure he arrives precisely on time. He’s expecting one of his superiors will be there to hand him his assignment. Instead he sees Lefevre, a pup barely out of training, waiting for him with a broad grin. 

“I‘ve been asked to show you to your kingdom,” he says. “This way, sir.” 

Down the corridor they go, Lefevre’s smile growing wider with each step. Only when they enter the stairwell does Javert understand the joke. They are headed down to the bottom floor. 

Under the Prefecture headquarters is a place men of the law dread more than any other: the subterranean filing rooms where clerks oversee the endless records kept on virtually everyone in Paris who’s ever had a brush with the law. Luckless recruits are made to do turns down there if they're deemed too green and useless to work on the streets. It's the worst assignment a young officer can draw. The air is stale and there's a jaundiced cast to the place and to the men who inhabit it, owing to the dozens of yellowed lamps that flicker on the walls. Shelves run the length and breadth of the huge vaulted rooms. The filing system is byzantine and the clerks take a smirking pride in keeping it that way. There are alcoves upon alcoves dedicated to the dossiers of the most violent criminals and the most notorious underworld gangs, but there are also files on town women and common theives, shelves that hold official correspondence from departments all across France, histories of officers past and present, prisoners, uprisings, official decrees, trivial changes to the laws on arrest and detention, paper and more paper; paper enough to cover the ocean. The largest room houses the records of political agitators. Through this demi-monde, clerks move like sickly yellow wraiths with soft steps and whispers. The loudest noise in the place comes from the racing footsteps of the messenger boys who run up and down the steps all day, connecting the nether world below with the sunlit one above. 

It's always been Javert's dim idea of Hell.

“Here's my desk. Or rather, yours now,” Lefevre says. He’s enjoying this far too much. “After the uprising of two months ago, the jails were full of looters and agitators, and they gave up plenty of information about their associates. The problem, as always, is putting it all together. It doesn't help that every one of the scoundrels goes by three aliases. So the order has come down to pull the files on all the names we have and all the names they named, and comb through them one by one so as to figure out who's working with who, and which gangs have formed alliances, where they’re operating, and what enterprises they’re running. Naturally, political agitators still have top priority - any evidence of cooperation between criminals and the rabble-rousing class is to be immediately brought upstairs.” He taps a sheaf of papers. “These are the names I’ve been given to work on. The ones I’ve completed have a cross beside them. All the rest, the unmarked ones, I leave to you. Sir.”

There are hundreds of unmarked names on the list. His heart sinks. “How long have they had you down here working on this?” 

“Long enough to lose my mind, almost,” Lefevre says. “But I’m not a chief inspector like some, so perhaps your rank will win you an early parole. I won’t ask whose tail you singed to earn yourself this punishment, but I'm guessing it was a high and mighty one.”

 _Never mind._ Javert will do his penance here until his superiors consider him properly chastened. Eventually they'll allow him back up into the light. He won't complain. If it weren't for Valjean giving him the push, he would not be back in uniform at all.

The thought of Valjean recalls the night before. It had not been as uncomfortable as he had feared. At the close of a quiet evening, Valjean had silently handed him a spare nightshirt. They had undressed separately, and when Javert entered the bedroom he found the other man already under the woolen blanket on the far margin of the bed, eyes closed. Javert had gotten in on the opposite side leaving a gap between their bodies. He had not known what to expect, but he had already resolved to be whatever Valjean needed.

But Valjean had simply pressed his hand chastely and murmured, “Good night.” Sleep must have overcome Javert quickly, for the next thing he knew it was morning and Valjean was already at the sideboard in the dining room, setting out rolls and butter. Over breakfast, Valjean seemed brighter than he had in weeks. They talked about what Javert expected of his first day back at work, and what changes Cosette was probably wreaking in the staid home of old M. Gillenormand at this very moment, and what damage had been done by the recent flooding of the Seine downstream, which was unusual this late in the year. Javert wondered what Valjean would do all day while he was gone, and if he planned to see Cosette. But he feared the answer, and thought it better not to ask. 

“I’ll return tonight,” he said on his way out. “But I may be too late to join you for dinner.” He did not plan to stay late in the file rooms -- he was a dutiful officer but not a madman. However, it was on his mind that when he left work he would return to the cafe on the rue des Palmes. 

Valjean hesitated, and for a moment Javert thought he meant to say there was no need to come -- that he had plans with Cosette or wished to dine alone. But then he clasped Javert's hand. “I will look forward to seeing you, no matter how late the hour.” 

.

"We don’t often see men of your rank working in the file rooms.” The clerk looks dourly amused. "Going to be down here long?” 

“Possibly," says Javert. _Possibly for the rest of my life._ But he shakes off the thought. He cannot believe his superiors will waste him this way for too long. Can they? He must endure; that's all there is to it. He draws his finger along the list of names and makes a neat cross beside the one he has just completed.

“That other officer, the one you replaced, used to joke about taking a torch to the place. Can you imagine?”

Javert closes his eyes and, for just a moment, indulges the fantasy. It would be so very satisfying to start a small flame over in the corner and watch it spread, watch it leap from shelf to shelf and alcove to alcove until it engulfed every document and sheaf of papers that had ever been filed. Admittedly, such a disaster would hurl the entire justice system into chaos, destroy a century of police work, and throw the streets open to the most dangerous criminals in France. But right now, Javert isn't sure he'd mind.

Sighing, he bends over his desk. 

 

His patience frays as the hours crawl on. His eyes are strained, and the clerk assigned to pull files for him is infernally slow. Javert's hands itch to snap the man's neck. “Show me your filing system and I’ll find what I need myself,” he roars at last. At least, if he does his own fetching, he has an excuse to get up from his desk.

He has never shirked a job in his life and he won't shirk this one no matter how maddening he finds it. He works meticulously through the list of names. He allows himself no rest even when his eyes burn with fatigue. But the instant the hour strikes six, he thrusts back his chair and goes thankfully up the stairs toward freedom. Nothing on earth or heaven could make him stay in that infernal place one extra minute. 

This time when he settles in at the cafe, he's better prepared. He has returned home first and changed into everyday clothes and bought a copy of the Drapeau Blanc. It's good to be outdoors breathing open air. His police instincts are rusty from months of disuse, and he finds he's looking forward to doing a little surveillance almost as much as he looks forward to his next glimpse of Emilie. The street bustles with activity as the dinner hour approaches. 

Nearly an hour passes before she emerges from the shop. She's wearing the same sort of smart dress she had on the day before. She's carrying a large handbag, or perhaps a sort of lady’s knapsack, and her hat is tied beneath her chin with a ribbon of blue silk. She locks up and takes off south down the Rue des Palmes. Javert leaves some folded bills on the table and slips away after her. 

There is an art to tailing a person on foot. One must blend in with the scenery, drop out of sight frequently, and try to anticipate the target’s next move. This pursuit is especially challenging for Javert because he doesn't know the area and can't use shortcuts or predict her route. Additionally, there’s the terrifying, thrilling chance that if she glances back at a moment when he is exposed, she’ll recognize him. Could she? Or has he changed too much? 

As it turns out, however, she is not the kind of woman who looks back. 

She leads him west, turning down one street and then another. The area starts to look more and more familiar but he can't get his bearings. It’s a shock when he steps out of an alley to see a well-known steeple rising above him, its peak vanishing into the deepening sky. 

It's the church of St. Claire. Emilie disappears within.


	18. nothing is the same

Watching the church from half a block away, Javert leans into a recess in the wall and tries to breathe.

What is she doing there? 

He doesn’t dare follow her inside. At this hour on a Thursday the church will be nearly deserted and he’d be exposed with nowhere to hide. So he waits and he wonders, thinking she'll surely be out soon. But a long time passes. 

She could be praying in there. Or--

He slips around the side of the church, up the little slope and past a thicket of brambles. Yes, there is the cemetery in the back, just as he remembers it, spread beneath the elm. It looks poorly tended now, the hedges overgrown and the paths weedy. It isn't quite dark yet but evening shade is falling. The bank of candles by the altar cast their glow through the window out into the dusk, as they did on many evenings, many years ago.

A movement on the far side of the cemetery catches his eye. He creeps closer, in the shadow of the hedges. He has always been able to move quietly.

Emilie is there, and she’s on her knees. 

She’s changed her clothes. No longer dressed like an upper-end shopkeeper, she’s now wearing the rougher clothes he’d expect on a country woman. The knapsack is open on the ground beside her, and she’s working at the soil with a trowel. As he watches, she carves a furrow in the earth and pours a packet of seeds along it. 

She’s planting a garden, here, of all places. Here where they used to meet.

He watches from concealment. To think she is only meters away. He could go to her now -- could simply step out into the open and speak her name aloud. 

Of course he will never do that. Thirty years ago, he left her to her fate. She's had all this time to curse his name. A slap across his face is what he'll get if he steps forward, that and a ready list of accusations, ones she's practiced for thirty years, ones he already knows by heart: 

_You never came that night! I waited, but you broke your word and he took me away. I told you he was planning it! You were a coward and you ruined me. Do you think I’d want anything from you now?_

Well, it doesn't matter, he realizes. He wouldn't be free to go to Emilie, anyway; he's got Valjean to think of now. Valjean needs him. It's a matter of duty.

He remains concealed for more than an hour, until Emilie replaces her tools and gloves in the knapsack, rises, and melts into the darkness like a ghost from ancient memory. 

.

Valjean is again in the chair by the fire, staring into the hearth with unfocused eyes. He had said he might take a trip soon, but from his empty gaze it seems to Javert that ther greater part of him has already left.

"I told Cosette to call me M. Fauchelevent now.” 

“Valjean, what is this madness? Why do this to yourself?”

“I went to see her today. We met in our usual room, the one she has set aside for our visits. But someone had removed the chairs.” He shrugs and stares into the fire.

"Well, that isn’t her doing, I’m sure,” says Javert. “I blame Pontmercy. What’s wrong with that boy? I saw the way he looked at you after you spoke to him at the reception.” 

Valjean looks down. “It’s all right. This is how it has to be."

Tonight Javert doesn't ask if he should stay. The matter is settled without a word. This time, when they go to bed, they don't arrange themselves as carefully far apart as they did the night before. Again, Valjean takes Javert's hand in the darkness and wishes him a good night. It is a comfortable bed. Javert's mind is distantly unquiet as he thinks of Emilie and Valjean and Cosette, but there's a strange kind of peace to be found here in Valjean's undemanding presence. His thoughts gradually slow. Valjean's even breaths make the bed stir gently, like a ship bobbing at anchor on a calm night. Javert sleeps. 


	19. necessary sacrifices

Morning follows night. Evening follows day.

Javert has never before appreciated the freewheeling chaos of the streets, but his bleary hours in the catacombs of the file room make him emerge into the Paris evening with hungry eyes. The raucous shouting of the _gamins_ on the streetcorner is, for once, a welcome noise. Even a scrap of dirty paper scudding down the street and catching in a carriage wheel gives him pleasure. 

That evening he hides himself well among the hedges behind the church of St. Claire, getting into position long before Emilie arrives. There are a dozen or so potted plants already set out near the back entrance of the church. Presumably she has had them delivered by her shop. It is evidence that she will be here soon.

Indeed, she appears just as expected, stepping out of the St. Claire's rear door into the cemetery. She’s wearing the same rustic clothes as the evening before. This time she isn’t alone; a man comes through the door behind her. He’s silver-haired and his face is patrician, with a high arch to the nose. His dark respectable garb mark him as a minor church official. From the fond way Emilie is smiling at him, it isn’t the first time they’ve met. 

“Water,” she’s saying. “Buckets and buckets of it today, if you please.”

“You’ll be the death of me, mademoiselle,” he answers. But he doesn’t look like it’s a death he’d mind.

Javert has a wild desire to beat the man senseless.

She kneels a few meters from the spot she was working yesterday and draws on a pair of leather gloves. It's so familiar, the way she walks and bends and rises; the grace and strength and certainty he always loved in her. These things are unchanged. But there are lines bracketing her mouth and around her eyes which are not familiar, and this more than anything fills him with remorse. 

He wasn't at her side during all the years when those lines were made. Because of this, he has no claim on her. 

Working deftly, she shells the plants out of their pots and tamps them into the soft earth. The churchman returns again and again with buckets of water. He’s overly solicitous, to Javert’s mind. His intentions toward her are obvious. Emilie smiles at him too much, and her smiles deepen the tender lines around her eyes. 

"You'll be a long time straightening this jungle out," the man says, sweeping his arm to indicate the cemetery. "I don't know how the Father ever talked you into it. You're a brave woman."

Emilie's voice is warm. "Oh, no, it was my idea from the first. I always loved this place when I was a girl. Father Patrice was only kind enough to let me have my way with it." She pauses and surveys the land around her. "I can see it all in my mind already, how I want it to turn out. Hand me that pot, if you please, monsieur?" He rushes to oblige.

Javert’s sorry now that he came. He’d like to slink away -- but of course he's trapped here like a rat until she leaves, forced to watch their courtship dance play out before him. It’s his penance, though it's less than he deserves. It’s proof, too, of what he's always known: he could never have kept her. Even if he'd taken that turn down her street that night, stood below her window, lit the candle she was watching for, it would not have changed his fate. She wouldn’t have loved him forever.

By the time Emilie packs her tools and goes back inside the church with the man following happily at her heels, there’s only a faint rim of light remaining in the western sky. Javert creeps from his hiding place, muscles stiff from holding the cramped position. He makes his way out to the street, stealthily. He has always been good at stealth. He keeps to the shadows until he’s well away. 

 

“What did you do today?” Javert asks. Valjean looks worse than ever. He's fading day by day. If he were a lame horse, Javert's duty would be clear and he would do it bravely without hesitation. He has always had a good touch with horses; less so with men.

“It‘s nothing,” Valjean whispers. “It’s all for the best this way.” 

“It’s _something,_ surely. Tell me. You saw Cosette?” 

Vajean looks away. “I tried. There was no fire in the grate. The room was very cold and when she came, she hugged her elbows and shivered. I stayed only a few minutes.” 

Javert curses. “What’s going on, Valjean? It’s not right, them making you unwelcome after all you’ve done for them.” 

“Really, I… I think they’re better off without me there." He gives Javert a miserable look. "Marius, you see -- he knows about me now. I told him the truth, at the reception. Who I am. My true name and my crimes. Toulon.”

Oh. Javert isn't completely surprised by the news. He should be pleased, really, to see Valjean step out from under the cover of his lies and declare the truth at last, and suffer for it as justice demands. But now all Javert can think, is that Valjean deserves better than the fate he has assigned himself. 

“Why? Why tell him now?”

“I have kept my past a secret, all these years, only to protect Cosette. I won't keep up this life of lies merely to protect myself.”

Javert is maddened by the dull resignation in his tone. “But I suppose you didn’t bother to tell him the rest of the truth: that he owes you his life for what you did the night of the uprising,” he says roughly. Valjean shrugs apathetically and Javert’s temper flares. “So you’re just going to let this happen? You’ll let Pontmercy shut you out. You'll give up your daughter as if she's nothing to you.”

“It’s for the best,” Valjean repeats.

.

Javert lies rigid in bed that night. Valjean reaches tentatively for his hand, but he keeps both his fists balled and close at his sides, and Valjean withdraws without a word. Javert remains sleepless for some time, and when morning comes he's still exhausted and angrier than ever. He does up his buttons and adjusts his collar with violence. Over breakfast he picks up the argument right where they left off. 

“Why are you giving her up so easily?” 

“I raised Cosette,” Valjean says tiredly. “I did my best. But I don‘t really belong in their world, do you see? There’s a darkness in me, and they’re so full of light and life. It’s better I stay away.” Javert, looking across the table, can hardly recognize his friend. It's been only two months since he was Jean-le-Cric and hauled a dying boy on his back through the sewers. Now he’s an old man. 

“Ridiculous,” Javert says. “You’re mad.” 

“I‘d only cause them grief. Marius doesn’t want me around, and Cosette-- if she ever learned the truth-- well, I couldn‘t stand for her to know.”

"So even though you've told Pontmercy, still you won't tell Cosette. Not even how you came to be her guardian. Not even who her m--"

“You know," Valjean interrupts, "I think I will be taking that trip soon. It's long past time. Cosette is happy, and you have your work now to sustain you. Everything is as it should be. I am satisfied.” 

“I’m not,” snaps Javert. Damn Valjean! Can’t he see how easy it would be to fight for a place in Cosette’s life, to make things turn out differently? Why is he settling for so little? “You and Pontmercy," he explodes. "I don‘t know which of you I feel more sorry for!” There's a pain scissoring through him. It's deep and unanswerable: an ancient wound tearing open. “The pair of you," he snarls, "you and the boy; two blind fools -- you deserve each other! You'll go to your lonely grave having driven off a girl who loves you. And Pontmercy will push you out, not knowing he owes you his life." A terrible understanding is splitting him open like a shattered stone. Thirty years ago he'd had a chance for happiness. "And you tell yourself that this is for the best. And you won't raise a hand or risk a thing to change it, when anyone can see--” 

Valjean slams down his fist. The cups jump; Javert jerks backward in astonishment. The man across the table vibrates with strength; for a moment, he is again Jean-le-Cric. _"Silence,"_ Valjean roars -- and it's a tone Javert hasn’t heard from him in ten years. “It is what it is! It’s done! and everything is settled! I’m warning you, Javert. Never speak of this to me again!” 

Javert, in his surprise, is thrown back on reflex: he stiffens and bows before he can stop himself. They might be back in the station-house in Montreuil-sur-Mer on a frigid night, two men of fierce passions and conviction confronting each other: the mayor commanding the Inspector to leave his post, and Javert standing at rigid attention as he takes the blow from his superior. And between them, on her knees, the whore: a garish ghost in a torn red gown. 

He leaves without another word. His heart is full of grief: for Valjean, and for himself.


	20. sauve qui peut

His next day down in the catacombs seems to last a year. Bent at his desk, Javert inhales and exhales the same unchanging air under the yellow light of a hundred lamps that cannot simulate even a shaft of honest sun. The names of criminals swim on the pages before him. But he endures. He has known worse.

His clerk nods towards the clock. "It's six.” 

Javert nods. “Yes. I’m nearly done here, myself.” The man turns his back without a word and goes up the stairs. The file room shows more life at this hour than at any other, as all the clerks but those few on night-watch beat their way up towards the light, like moths.

With the din receding and the cavernous rooms falling mostly quiet again, Javert has one last thing to do. He pads quickly between the shelves. He finds what he's seeking and folds it carefully beneath his coat; it only takes a minute. Then he, too, makes his exodus up to the first floor and past the entryway where the front-desk man bids him a good night. Out on the street, he walks with his head bent. It's not the church he's going to. He won’t spend his life like that: skulking in shadows, watching her live her bright life that no longer includes him. 

No more of that.

He hails a carriage and all too soon finds himself at his destination. Quickly he raises a gloved fist, one that trembles only a little, and raps hard against the door. 

 

Toussaint gives a cry of surprise. “M. Javert!” 

“Fetch your mistress,” he orders. “And M. Pontmercy as well.” 

Toussaint shows him to a chair but he doesn’t take it; he’s still standing straight as a lamppost when Pontmercy hurries into the room. “M. Javert? Welcome! I… wasn’t expecting you. I'm surprised to see you in uniform.” His eyes rove over Javert somewhat fearfully; clearly he is trying to take in the implications of Javert's change of dress. “I wasn’t aware you were still active with the police.” 

“I took leave. I’m back at my post now.” 

“This isn’t-- It’s not an official inquiry, is it?” 

“Perhaps it is,” Javert says. “What do you know about Mme. Pontmercy‘s former guardian?" Pontmercy's nervousness is a balm for his own. "The man who calls himself Fauchelevent.” 

A less astute observer might not have noticed Pontmercy's grip tighten on the back of the chair and the look of sudden fright around the boy's eyes. “Almost nothing,” Pontmercy says faintly. “Why -- what is all this about?”

Javert looks the boy over. He's not a boy anymore, really. Despite his fear he stands tall; and if his recent injuries still pain him he is trying not to show it. Javert lets his eyes stray over the bookshelves and balustrades that surround them. He grew up rich, this young man. Yet he broke away from all this to face the rifles of the Guard and defy his king and family.

 _A traitor,_ Javert thinks. And, reluctantly: _A brave man._

He says, “You were at the barricades on the night of the uprising. Don’t deny it. That’s where you got injured. Do you remember none of it?”

Pontmercy tries to stammer out a reply, but Javert has no interest in listening to lies. “Do not be afraid,” he says impatiently. “I know all about your revolutionary activities. If I had wanted to see you in prison I could have put you there long ago.”

Just at that moment, Toussaint returns. Cosette is at her side, and gives a cry of pleased surprise when she sees Javert. 

"We’re busy here, darling,” Pontmercy says. He doesn’t look at her. His eyes are still fixed on Javert: the rabbit petrified before the wolf. "Will you let M. Javert and me have a few words alone?" 

Javert bows to her. “Madame; please join us.” His tone is more command than invitation. “We are speaking of your guardian.” 

Cosette exclaims, “Papa? That is-- I mean-- M. Fauchelevent?” 

Pontmercy edges close to Javert. “All right,” he says in a low voice. “I won’t deny that I was at the barricades. But I would rather not discuss this in front of my wife. There is no need to frighten her.”

“I was there too,” Javert replies coolly. Turning to Cosette he snaps, "Fauchelevent? But you are mistaken. _That is not his name.”_

“You? You were there! Cosette, my love -- you must leave M. Javert and me; we have important matters to discuss.” His face has gone ashen and now he is trembling all over. Cosette runs to his side.

“Darling, what is it? And I’ll certainly do no such thing! M. Javert, what do you mean -- his name is of course Fauchelevent; how--”

Pontmercy clenches his hands together and speaks in a rushed, agitated voice. “If you were there, then you can tell me what happened. I know someone saved my life, but it’s all in pieces in my mind -- there was a man who carried me in his arms, I think. I remember him bearing me into a dark tunnel. I was able to discover the name of the driver of the fiacre who brought me home that night, but all he could tell me was that two men rode with me and brought me inside to my grandfather. One was an officer of the law.”

“That was I.” 

“You! You were the man! Then it was you who carried me away from the barricades to safety!”

“Hardly,” snorts Javert. 

“But-- But you must know who did!” 

“I know a lot of things,” says Inspector Javert drily. He looks at Cosette. “In fact--" The words don't come easily; he grinds them out by force. "I knew your mother, madame.”

At those words, both Marius and Cosette fall silent. 

It's an old memory, but Javert can see her still. Her hair was yellow like that of the girl in front of him. In her sodden dress, on her knees in the station-house, she pressed her lips to the hem of his coat and pled for leniency so she could keep her miserable life, her miserable work. ‘Have mercy!’ she had begged, ‘I have a child!’ 

_Love is outside the laws of man._

The memory of Fantine blurs. In its place Javert now sees another woman -- thin and dark, with sharp bones pushing up under porcelain skin and dark limp hair tumbling over her forehead. She is sitting on her pallet of straw, weary to the bone, and her rasping voice is broken by ceaseless coughing. Still she finds strength enough to put her arm around the boy beside her. “Can you see them?” she whispers, raising a thin arm to point at the barren cell wall stained with age and sorrows. “The chimerae, _mon fils,_ in the treetops. And over that rise, beside a blue lake: the land that waits for you.” 

“Tell me,” Cosette says, and her eyes are luminous.

Javert bows. “It is more properly Valjean’s story to tell.” At the sound of that name, Pontmercy recoils; Cosette simply looks at him in innocent confusion. “But I suppose I can say this much.” He swallows hard against the lump that has suddenly risen in his throat. “Your mother -- what she did, she did for you.”

Cosette’s grip tightens on her husband’s arm. Tears have sprung to her eyes. Yet her face is aglow. 

“I have a carriage waiting outside,” Javert says, his voice suddenly husky. “We can talk on the way. Come quickly.”

 

At Valjean's home he offers Cosette his hand getting out of the carriage, and the three of them mount the stairs together. “Wait here,” he instructs. Thrusting open the door with his shoulder, he is not surprised to see Valjean sunk in his usual chair, eyes closed. 

Javert strides past him to the fire, which is dimming in the grate. From under his greatcoat he takes a sheaf of papers. His hands tremble. The utter lawlessness of what he’s about to do breaks over him. 

He has no idea how he’s come to this. 

He lays the bundle down; not in the heart of the flames -- he can't do that -- but on the edge of the grate as far as possible from the fire. Within seconds, the margins of the documents begin to curl. He watches, his intestines knotting, and clenches his hands resolutely behind him. Heat begins to sear the papers. It's his work of almost two decades; a pursuit he has carried on for most of his career. There goes the statement from Petit-Gervais, blackening slowly from the bottom up. There’s the official notice from the mairie at Digne, dated 1815. There goes a letter, ten years old and written in his own careful script from Montreuil-sur-Mer, concerning a man who was then going by the name of M. Madeleine; Javert still knows every line of what he wrote by heart. There goes his report from Montfermeil; and there, a document with the seal of Toulon. As the flames reach out to claim their prize, another twisting page briefly reveals these words: “On this day, declared at the Assizes Court in Arras--” 

Then fire bursts through the pages. It is over quickly. A moment later, nothing remains but a bit of smoke drifting up the chimney.

Javert knows a moment of giddy hilarity, and wonders if he’s going to be sick. He turns on Valjean, who hasn’t yet opened his eyes. 

“Wake up,“ he says harshly. “I’ve brought company.” 

Valjean barely has time to raise his head in wonder when the two young people burst in and rush to his side, and fall to their knees before him.

 

A little later, Javert slips away. No one notices him leave; there are too many desperate embraces and shouts of joy; too many tears. Cosette has thrown her arms around Valjean and is crying “Papa!” over and over. Pontmercy is still on his knees, trembling. He keeps repeating, "You should have told me. You should have told me who my savior was." Valjean, caught between the two of them, is looking from one to the other as if seeing angels come down to him from heaven. His face is a child's face, transfigured by bliss. 

It’s nearly dark. Javert asks the driver to hurry. 

By the time the carriage arrives in front of the church, he’s bathed in sweat and unsure his legs are strong enough to hold him up. But they do, and he comes over the rise, pressing close against the hedges. Yes, she is there. She’s standing by the trunk of the elm, caught in the circle of half-light that filters through the arched church window. The candles by the altar give a light purer than the moon. They have been lit by the faithful: lit in memory, lit in prayer, lit in hope. 

She is tracing the fissured bark of the elm with her fingers, surveying her garden -- dreaming, probably, of what she will make of it. She is standing easily.

He moves closer, still staying outside the light. “Emilie,” he whispers. Even his voice is shaking. 

She gives no sign of hearing him. He smooths back his hair. It’s the only part of him that isn’t sweating.

Behind her is the old elm, its scar still visible. It has survived a hundred years, through storm and trouble.

 _“Am I not worth the risk?”_ she asked him once. 

He’s got a dozen roses in his hands. They passed a flower girl along the drive and it struck him that he should not come to Emilie empty-handed. He bought an assortment of colors, since he is not a man who knows anything about women or flowers. 

She hasn’t seen him yet. He could still flee. He could wait for another day, when the timing might be better, when he might be more sure of her answer. 

He edges forward. Now he is on the border where the glow of the candlelight merges into the darkness. “Emilie,” he says, louder. 

She looks up, alert. 

“Please don’t be afraid," he says. "It’s me." His voice chokes. "Me, Jacques.” 

She gasps. The shadow from the elm is on her; he can’t see her face. 

He steps out into the light, clutching the roses hard enough to crush them, his heart pounding to burst his chest. In the high darkness above, a winged creature swoops down into the branches of the elm. Its bright gold eye flashes. 

"Emilie!” It's almost a sob. 

She sees him. Her lips are parted, her eyes wide and startled. He can’t read her expression -- it could be shock or joy or fear. But suddenly he is running, stumbling, towards her; his arms open, crying out her name.


End file.
